


Let Me Have This

by Sing



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Complicated - Freeform, Dark Abbie, F/M, Family, Mental Abuse, Messy, Possession, Romance, Violence, complex bonds, dark Jenny, innerconflict, spells, trigger warning, unconventional pairing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-05-01 16:26:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 34,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5212721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sing/pseuds/Sing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vaguely s3 canon compliant, with many creative liberties.</p><p>Six months into Jenny's dark turn what remains of team witness is battered, beaten and downtrodden. Abbie's life is still reeling professionally, and she feels the pain of losing her sister to the darkness keenly. </p><p>But so does Joe.</p><p>With so many obstacles thrown Abbie's way, paranormal and normal alike, will she accept this new thing that's now been thrown her way? however unexpected?</p><p>originally posted in my multiship fic "Blasphemy"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't mean to continue this, but I think I will. 
> 
> If you like your fics out of the box, here we go. 
> 
> Sorry not sorry.
> 
> And I will try not to make Jenny an absolute villain.
> 
> Please leave your thoughts!

Abbie feels like hell, like the her world is falling apart, and she would call her sister right now if Jenny wasn't too busy playing devoted daughter/power slave or what have you to Pandora and her risen Egyptian God lover.

It has been half a year.

Six months.

Logically, the shard should have fried Jenny to death the very night that she wandered into that cave and called her new masters home to continue wreaking havoc on sleepy hollow. It should have ended her there, or the god, in all his power and might, should have smote her then and there---and Abbie wishes it now, straining, groaning and fresh from another battle, tears in her flesh and Crane muttering furiously to himself about ways to destroy a creature who's weapon is sound---he slams out the door suddenly, to the archives she presumes----Abbie wishes, and it kills her, but she wishes Jenny had died from the power overload like she was supposed to, instead of being caught here, facing down the impossible, fiery, terrifying, loyal thing that Jenny has become instead.

It tears her in two, every single time.

There has been a constant onslaught of attacks now from Pandora dearest. The god has visited upon them all of the comrades that he carried with him into the afterlife, and even Crane, infamous, I've crossed every single creature imaginable in the past in some convenient and unlikely way, Ichabod Crane, even HE is finding himself at odds now with the new enemies they face.

Nothing is easier.

Joe is a hardened man now, a sometimes pitiful creature, always pleading and begging the demon beauty that is her sister to return to him, please, open your eyes and see me Jenny and for a cruel brief moment Jenny lures him in, reaches for him, and the damn fool, every time.

Every.

Damn.

Time. Joe falls for it, he loses focus for that sliver of a second and it's the white twinkle in her eyes that always tells on her, Abbie always sees it first.

Joe in his delusions must take it for a sparkle of the woman underneath, but Abbie knows it for the cursed power crackling, humming, living still, against all odds inside of her sister.

There have been no explanations how Jenny has survived the shard this long. And they need no explanations for why Pandora keeps her with them. It is obvious. She thrives on the pain of pitting these two sisters against one another. On the utter heartbreak.

The sorrow, defeat, blood continues to act as a catalyst to unleash more fresh horrors. Abbie's own love for her sister has been turned into a weapon against her. And it cuts her to the core.

If she could hate Jenny, if she could forget the human she was and hate the thing, the DEVIL, the BEAST, the DEMON, the POWER that is not alive but merely an infection, turning her sister into it's wicked host---if she could reduce sibling, blood, to evil, abomination, wrong---if she could erase that love and hate----they might have a fighting chance. At the very least, Pandora might see it fit to dispatch Jenny once and for all, release her from the horrible bonds of their power.

They have tried spells. They have exhausted resources and hope fades with every try.

For the first month Jenny was always a mute, violent thing. An unwelcome, sickening, terrifying vision of glowing pulsing skin and too much speed and power. A woman possessed. And that was fine.

They'd seen that before. They could deal with that.

How sad is it--- Abbie winces, tears running down her face as she tries to clean her own wounds alone in her room,---how sad is it, that I can DEAL with that? that it qualifies as normal? she shakes her head, It hurts, it burns, her sisters attacks are always the worst. Cut the deepest. Past skin and bone and blood, deeper, deeper to her heart, where it hurts to beat, hurts to breathe, hurts to live.

Hurts to live in a world where her sister is her enemy. And she is coming alive in it.

Because that, truly, is the new horror of the thing. Jenny has regained consciousness IN that demon power. She is AWAKE and AWARE. It fuels her yes, but she knows them, remembers, can taunt them with memories and fool them into believing she has returned.

Everything burns.

Hurts.

Makes her sick.

She is alone.

Impossible, because, she has Crane, right? doting, loyal, our fates entwined Ichabod Crane---except when whatever terror made him flee for nine months without warning. And even after this long, even understanding it to a degree, even appreciating the chance it gave her to pursue her own dreams, that absence niggles at her and wittles away at her sense of security.

If Crane can disappear and Jenny could turn, so thoroughly, so completely, if Danny could......and she won't think about how she felt, so long ago now, back when she found out about Sophie. Sophie who is around much more now, and she feels as if she's competing for her job......if they......if they can....can leave.......abandon, keep secrets.......who, who does she have now?

Her door creaks. She looks up.

"Joe," she starts, straightening, wincing and cursing to herself, avoiding his gaze where she sits on the bed, trying to reach scratches, blisters? gaping wholes? who knows, on her back, because that last attack had been nothing but roaring noise and chalkboard screeches and then inexplicable pain, but whatever is back there, that she can't see, it burns and she can't reach them. She knows it. Joe knows it.

But she's feeling too vulnerable right now to outright acknowledge that her armour has dents and is about to very damning well fall off.

"I need to look at your back," he says.

"Tend to your own," she grunts, shifting, crying out in pain and hating herself.

"I didn't take that full on like you, got only my arms, but.....she did this to you. I....did that to her---"

"No---" Abbie throws her hand up.

It has been a running argument of Joe insisting that Jenny's transformation is his fault. That had he left Nevin's alone Jenny would never have come in contact with the stone and this wouldn't have happened. But blame gets them nowhere. Never has. They blame Pandora for many horrors but it doesn't make her shameful and teary eyed and guilty. She doesn't ask for a way to make it up to them. So Abbie does not let Joe blame himself for Jenny.

It won't make Jenny come running back into their arms.

Not without knives and fire at least.

"No Joe, we aren't doing that tonight,"

Joe clenches his jaw, draws nearer into the room. "Let me have this." he says. "Let me own it. I lead us here, I paved that path for her and...." he swallows hard and nods to her shirt, clinging to her back. "I need to look after you now, for what I've done. For my part. Let me. Do this."

Abbie shakes her head still but relents, turning away from him she whips the shirt off. She hears him hiss at the sight.

"That bad?"

"She branded you Abbie," he says, his voice broken.

She snorts. "Like a cow?"

"like property. Abbie....she's coming for you."

"I'll go to her if it comes to that. but can you please make it stop burning so much,"

Joe blinks back the tears welling in his eyes. That the woman he began to feel for could do this to her sister, his heart twists. A light dims. No, it snuffs out. Their Jenny isn't there anymore. Their Jenny wouldn't do this. He sweeps damp cloths and antiseptic over the markings and curlicues tracing and dancing across her back. He prays desperately that they will heal. That Abbie won't have to carry around the burden of this with her forever. That the branding itself isn't already some malignant thing working and coursing through her. Destined to take her away from him too.

"Don't cry Joe, please," she implores him, but Joe gives a hollow laugh because he can hear the soft broken emptiness in Abbie's voice, it's evident to him that she is crying too.

"Crane will find a way to remove it,"

"Crane can't solve everything,"

"Abbie you can't---"

"Can't what?" she snaps, whirling on him. "Can't stay ahead of my job? six months later and I am still trying to play catch up to the new star pupil. Can't...Can't keep my sister safe? Can't save the damn world can't get a break can't give up? I WANT to give up Joe. I am so damn tired it's not funny."

"Well you can't." he says firmly. "That's why you're Abbie Mills. Because you don't. You don't abandon people and you don't give up, you fight like hell and you won't stop now Abbie I won't let you."

"What am I fighting for huh? this world that gives me so much and then finds a creative way to take it back? What have I got? and don't say Crane." she shudders, long buried bitterness bubbling to the surface. "Don't say Crane when a nine month silence is so loud"

"I'm none of the people you need most Abbie but there's me. I might count a little?"

Her eyes lock with his a moment before she turns her back. "Are you done?"

"I'm gonna put some bandages on," he says, grabbing the gauze. "Arms up," she obeys as he begins passing the roll around her torso, fingers grazing her skin, scarred and unscarred. They are too close like this, her without her shirt on, both smelling his cologne and her hair. It's an absurd urge and she should fight it. But when was the last time she was held? properly?

Like she was cherished? Crane has held himself away consistently. His declarations are lovely, but the warm loving tenderness between them as friends, froze over.

Joe has a similar thought. A desperate thought. That he can't lose both sisters. He damned one but he cannot allow harm to another. He's finished wrapping her up and when he's done he helps Abbie pull her shirt back on who still hisses with pain, and then slides an arm around her waist, gently, careful of her wounds, and pulls her to his chest.

She should fight this but she doesn't.

His chin rests on her head. his hands rub her arms, his grip tightens just a bit beyond wise and she feels it, it stings just a bit but she'll allow it because. Because because because.

Because maybe sometimes Abbie just gets things.

Like Witness Duty and Ichabod Crane and Demons and failed romances and job trouble. Those things just come to her.

Maybe she gets this moment of comfort, just because.

*******************

It's a week after, when Crane volunteers himself on a sojourn for an artifact---someone had to become the bounty hunter of their group with Jenny gone---that the change is complete.

That they forge this new, dangerous, wrong, right, careful, just because, because, they're living and need to remember that, thing.

Joe is checking her wounds again. It's evening. He is gentle as he runs his fingers over the scars that are far less angry and darkened, but there nonetheless. He cannot shake the feeling that this means Abbie has been claimed. That Jenny means to come for Abbie either to finish her off or force her to join the darkness on the other side. He will not contemplate what that will mean. "I'm so sorry," he whispers, breath ghosting across her back. His fingers grip her shoulder and he presses his forehead against the back of her neck. "I'm so sorry Abbie, I.....if you could see this,"

"I don't want to," she says, voice steady, save for the barest tremor. She doesn't need the image of a demonic branding by her own sister burned into her brain. Doesn't need to go to sleep tracing those patterns and characters wondering what they mean and how soon before Jenny comes to collect.

And it is then, because he's sorry, because they are wounds he cannot heal, that his lips touch her shoulder. Abbie holds her breath. Another. He lingers this time. Another.

She snaps out of it, enough at least to say, "Joe,"

"Let me have this." he says softly, continuing to kiss her shoulders, fingers running down her arms and her breathing unexpectedly, traitorously ramps up. "Let me care, Abbie, please? let me take care of you with what I have,"

She turns in his arms to say no, this can't happen, this is not our fate---his lips are there before she can speak. Tender, soft, gentle. He sweeps back her hair and cradles her as she lays her down on the bed. Kissing her slowly and handling her with such care before something inside of him fragments and he deepens these kisses.

There is no sense or logic in this world. She thinks, finding how odd it is to know the taste of Joe Corbin's lips, to know that her skin tingles where his fingers skim her sides.

Part of her wonders if this is hollow. How much regret will there be after this.

Is this a thing she will settle for?

But he's making her feel things right now that aren't pain.

She'd forgotten there was something besides pain.

********************

He stays with her the whole time that Crane is away. No attacks, thankfully. He is in her bed every night. At her table every morning. Hands in her hair. Backs against walls. Lips crashing against one another again and again.

Somewhere somehow, in that short time, a light goes on in Joe again. Living stops hurting Abbie so much.

The night before Crane gets back, after, when they are twined together, in their nakedness, he kisses her neck until she swats him, telling him to stop, though her giggles aren't convincing.

In the morning when she rises Joe gasps at the image of her back facing him.

"What" Abbie asks, panicking, spinning in the mirror, forgetting the vow she made herself not to look on the horrible branding on her skin. And she sees it, she shudders looking at it, but there's something else too.

The lines are breaking.

As if whatever binding thing they are is beginning to unravel, to come undone.

There are gaps, great big sprawling ones in the design, as if it is receding.

When her eyes meet with Joes, she approaches him and sinks onto the bed beside him. They are silent while he holds her.

If they had any illusions about what was becoming between them, this much is clear.

The branding power that had tried to make Abbie property was vanishing.

No wicked power could claim Abbie.

Not with them laying claims to each other.


	2. Chapter 2

"Leftenant?"

Abbie startles in Joes arms. Reality snaps back into terrifying focus. The two weeks Crane has been gone ends the strange dream world they'd inhabited instead, with eachother. That place where it made sense to take comfort in one another in this damning betraying way, evaporates with every echo of his footsteps downstairs. Her mind reels and fast forwards. But her limbs, her limbs are lead. Part of her is frozen in the very recent past of being held in Joe's arms, the other is straining to get away from him fast enough so the entire world doesn't crash down around their ears. She moves slowly, deliberately, scanning and reaching for clothes and Joe finally gets it, begins performing similar actions but at the sound of Crane's footsteps on the stairs it's clear that being clothed will not explain away why Joe is in her bedroom. 

Nothing can explain this, really. 

It's inexcusable. 

"Don't put your shirt on," Joe instructs, his back turned as he hauls on his jeans and shuffles his feet in his shoes. 

"What?" she snaps, having just done that very thing. 

He glances over her shoulder. "Take it off," he hisses. 

She looks at him incredulously. "Are you insane?" 

"Leftenant?"

"We'll tell him I'm checking your wounds,"

"At 8am?"

"Leftenant?" hurrying steps. 

Joe throws his hands up in the air, silently demanding if she has better idea. Irritated she whips her shirt off, left just in her bra that she had just managed to fenagle herself back into and sits on the edge of the bed, facing away from him while Joe dashes around the room stowing away suspicious looking things. Sprays the room thoroughly and digs out gauze and the first aid kit that she keeps in her bathroom. 

"Miss Mills I---oh Master Corbin-- what---"

Joe looks calmly over at Crane standing in the door way. "Hey Crane," he greets jovially. "Just checking up on Abbie, suffered some burns from the last attack, just seeing how they've been healing,"

Abbie can't decide if she's impressed or disturbed by how easily Joe lies. "Success?" she calls to Crane, glancing over her shoulder at him who has, of course, turned his back for her modesty sake, and is now speaking to the empty doorway. 

"Affirmative, leftenant, we can debrief downstairs once Master Corbin has finished seeing to you," with that he marches briskly down the hall and away from them. Abbie releases the breath she was holding and then jolts when she feels Joe's lips on her shoulder. 

"Easy. Doesn't know a thing,"

"We can't carry on with this," she says, finally getting her shirt on and moving to the mirror, checking her hair. "We can't." she meets his gaze in the mirror and holds it for a moment before he breaks away. 

"I'll be downstairs Abbie,"

"Don't act like you didn't know it would have to end," she says softly. "This wasn't the beginning of anything. It couldn't be. Just two screwed up people dealing with pain the wrong way,"

Joe nods to her back. "Healing takes a lot of funny forms," 

"Joe don't---"

"Crane's waiting," he snaps and leaves her there, staring into the mirror. 

Not liking her reflection that tears up at his retreating back.


	3. Chapter 3

"Where's Joe?" Abbie asks as she strolls into the kitchen.

"Master Corbin proclaimed himself in dire need of coffee and even when I offered to brew some insisted he could not possibly be sated unless it was from starbucks." he sniffs as he sips from his own recently brewed cup. "Instant gratification generation indeed. Wanting what they want when they want, with no care of how it is obtained or who it affects,"

The resounding crash of Abbie's mug splintering on the floor earns her an inquiring gaze that is most unwelcome. 

He wordlessly rises from the table, moving swiftly to help sweep away the mess of the cup, but Abbie can feel the eyes burning a whole in the side of her head. "You seem not quite yourself, Leftenant,"

"How do you mean?"

she asks, straightening and tucking her hair behind her ear. 

"For one your shirt is on backwards,"

Abbie looks down at herself and exhales exhaustedly. Not only backwards but inside out. She curses Joe mentally, he could have at least pointed that out before he left in a huff. Abbie grumbles as she exits into the hall way where she performs a quick switch and walks back in. Crane eyes her carefully as she sits down at the table. 

"Are you certain there weren't any......developments, while I was away?" he queries. 

Developments? understatement of the year, she thinks, and nearly chuckles to herself. 

"Nothing, Crane," 

He keeps watching her and it makes her uncomfortable. Crane hasn't looked at her like something worth deciphering in ages. There was a time when his intrusive prodding was common but also welcome, a reminder that he was invested in her well being, their friendship, as well as their witness bond. That had waned considerably since they reunited. And she admits, her own desire for 'fences' probably hadn't helped either. He wasn't as prone to poke and pry as before, and it became a new sort of common for them, to not be over involved, but it came with a distance, a coldness, that she also has to admit was...well, strange. 

Although to be frank with the fantastic mess she's made in the span of mere two weeks, she wouldn't mind if Crane chose to be aloof and distracted right now. She'll crumble under that inquisitive gaze. He only need push the right button.

And the sad fact is Abbie has many buttons to push these days. It's highly likely that at the slightest provocation she'll self destruct. She studiously ignores him staring at her while she takes great gulps of coffee before Crane changes tack. 

"I was not aware you were so grievously injured, Leftenant,"

She makes a non comittal grunting sound. "it's nothing Crane,"

His brows rise slightly. "Three weeks and still being treated?"

"I can count," she replies curtly, knowing she sounds hostile and defensive. 

"Well, what is it?"

"Pardon?"

"I would like to see your wounds, Miss, Mills," he says with Crane like insistence. 

"It's not necessary, they're practically healed, Joe's been looking after it," boy had he ever, she thinks bitterly. 

How many times had he kissed the scarred flesh on her back? Stroked it slowly, gently tracing each groove and character with his fingers. How could time be so infinite in such a contained space? How had two weeks felt like a suspended eternity? She suddenly feels too warm with the flood of memories, of tongues and teeth and curled up together in her sheets. She shouldn't have these, she thinks shamefully. These should have never been her memories to make. But he'd wanted to give them to her, the bastard. 

And she can curse him now because were it up to her alone, she'd have carried on in her insufferable lonely cold, silence. 

But he'd asked. 

"Let me care for you with what I have,"

And all Joe had was himself, truthfully. He'd asked to give himself and she'd let him. What sort of person did that make her? 

"Abbie?"

Her name breaks her out of her trance. Had Ichabod been talking that whole time? He gives her his puzzling gaze again and screws up his mouth to ask another question when the door opens and Joe returns, remarkably less irritated than he'd been when he'd stormed from her room. He won't meet her eye though as she joins the table and Crane shifts his gaze between the two of them before reciting once more whatever it was Abbie had missed the first time. 

***************************  
Crane steps out to run an errand, once more leaving them alone. She almost tells Joe to leave but he's got her against the wall before she can say anything else. 

"Just tell me you don't want this," he murmurs, hovering inches away.

"This? what is this, Joe? what could can it be to either of us at the end of the day? this---this is wrong," 

"It's healing you,"

"That's a crock theory and we can't back it up. Maybe the brand is wearing away naturally---" she clenches his arm suddenly, stricken with unbearable pain, her knees buckle and she cries out, sinking to the floor and taking him with her. It's as if someone is dragging a hot blade across her skin, over and over, drawing something they can't seem to get right, she's gasping, crying, shivering with the terror of what's happening.

"Abbie?" he calls, panicked, gripping her, somehow sensing what's happening and shoving his hands up the back of her shirt and she claws at him because it stings, it's like she's on fire. 

"It's reforming," he concludes, feeling with his fingers. "It's...the brand is reconnecting, mending, but how---"

"make it stop," she begs. She wishes that the small sound she makes was a thing that she could murder. "I can't--" her scream echoes through the house and Joe keeps clinging to her. 

"I'll call Crane,"

"No, no we can't,"

"Abbie you're in pain,"

"You're the EMT." she bites out. "Fix it,"

"Nothing in my kit," he grits his teeth as her nails dig into him. "Is equipped for this, we need something stronger than" he grunts as she applies more pressure. 

"Please," she says, weak, defeated. "Do something, anything, I can't," and suddenly her grasp relaxes and she slumps in his arms. 

"Abbie? Abbie, no no no stay with me, alright? Abbie?" she convulses once, twice, and then he watches in horror as the spiralling veins on her back that form the runes begins creeping around her neck and the sides of her face. "No," he says, not sure what's happening, but whatever it is, it's retaliating, making itself stronger to prevent it being further erased. He touches her face, glad that it's still warm, checks her pulse, and startles when her hand twitches. Her eyes flutter open weakly. 

"Joe," she rasps. "I---"

"You're going to survive this, we're going to fix it," he promises. Abbie shakes her head. This is penance for her betrayal she knows, this....this is hers now. This is vengeance personified. "Abbie," he warns, angry now. With her or the rune, it's unclear. "Abbie!" he shakes her and her body reverberates with the pain of it, the rune rushing down her arms. He watches in wide eyed terror. The damn thing is trying to take over. She screams. She chokes, heaves. He can see smoke rising off her skin where it burns itself in. Turning her into a violent etch and sketch. 

He doesn't know what to do. 

He folds her up in his arms, tucks his head in her neck and keeps whispering, "I'm here, I'm here, stay with me," He rubs her arms and her back is pressed to his chest and he just pulls her in closer to him. He kisses her sweaty temple and at last her body stops revolting, the horrible power retreats. She is sweat slick, shivering and almost whimpering for the pain she is in. He brushes her hair back from her forehead, kisses her there, rocks her back and forth gently, soothing her. Her skin begins to cool. The pain ebbs. But she is still so scared. She has never known pain like that, the way it seized her body, the malevolence of it, the possessiveness. Mine, it had hissed in her ear. Mine, Mine, Mine. 

It wants her, the darkness. It wants her for its own. She cries softly, weakly turns and grips Joe's collar. "It spoke to me," she says. "It won't stop Joe. It said 'Mine' I belong to it, it won't let me go, it....it will kill me first,"

He grips her chin in his hand and searches her eyes. "I don't know another way," he says.

"You don't want another way," she manages, still feeling so broken but needing this, needing it though she knows it's wrong, has no right to it, shouldn't allow it. This thing reduces her, breaks her will and makes her weak. Makes her willing to allow this treachery again to save her own hide. 

"Does it really matter if it helps" he asks. His lips find hers. They shouldn't already be familiar. She shouldn't know what this feels like what he tastes like. Something like ice crashes over her and with a sharp snapping pain the runes on her arm fracture, receding away. She doesn't like what this means. 

Because being with Joe had made the brand retreat yes, but return angry and vengeful. She doesn't want to find out what will happen when it resurges again. Yet she also knows that if what she has with Joe is somehow....fending it off.....it means they....they have to carry on like this. 

That this is the beginning of something. 

Whether she likes it or not.


	4. Chapter 4

It's a lapse in judgement on Abbie's part but she can't help but draw comparisons between then, the two weeks with Joe and reckless awful abandon, and now.

**************  
The first morning, when she'd awoken with his chest pressed to her back and their legs tangled--she'd been almost too dazed to be properly dismayed with herself. She'd crept gingerly out of the bed, headed toward the shower and had glanced back over her shoulder, at him, his form, still half draped in blanket and sleeping like a log. He'd snored. She'd smiled. 

He'd woken shortly after she'd gotten the water running and he'd easily sidled in with her. A protest had worked up her throat but he had carried on about his cleansing in silence and was out of the shower before she could reprimand him. He had coffee and toast prepared when she'd gotten downstairs. He'd handed her a cup the moment she crossed the threshold. For a moment Abbie had felt a strange relief that he was treating this with casual aloofness, like the one off it was, should have been. She was almost inclined to believe she'd dreamed the whole thing. They passed the day mostly separate, her busy with work, clear headed, for once. Himself, back on the job. Yet when he knocked on the door at two am, the odd hour he had gotten off work, she'd side stepped and let him in. He'd kicked off his shoes, asked how her day had been, how she felt, she'd told him there was pizza in the fridge if he was hungry. No, he'd shaken his head, had something to eat already. 

Well, you can shower or whatever. She'd said. Padding quietly back into the study where she had been reading, for leisure, a rare occasion these days. Joe had appeared shortly after, smelling of soap and had paused awkwardly in the doorway. She's cocked an eyebrow at him then and he'd shuffled his feet. "About last night," he began and Abbie was prepared for this conversation, she'd smiled at him and said:

"All forgotten, we're good,"

"Forgotten," he'd repeated, stricken. "You've forgotten? so soon? I'm hurt," 

Abbie chuckled. "Sorry to wound your pride Joe."

"Oh you haven't teased me since....."

"I never teased you," she retorted, closing the book and turning to face him. " You were a terror to babysit," she insisted. "Pulled my hair, hid my shoes, like the stupid boys at school,"

"Who probably had crushes on you," he'd laughed. "Who probably thought, gee, Abbie Mills sure is pretty, but she sure is weird, so I don't know how to tell her I like her without being a brat,"

"Careful Joe, I might think you're insinuating YOU had a crush on me," she smirked. He'd sauntered over to her in the chair then and was gliding a hand through her hair, his eyes twinkling. His eyes hadn't glimmered like that, like the old Joe, in so long, she didn't know she'd even missed it. The Joe who crackled with curiosity and joviality. She knew the past few months had taken it's toll but she wasn't aware until then, seeing the difference in him, the playfulness, exactly how changed he had become. How welcome a sight it was to see some of the Joe from before. And a bizarre fascination with this had made her smile up at him, holding his gaze for too long as he closed the distance between them. 

They'd cuddled that night. 

She'd twined around him the night after, tumbling him over on the bed, like the greedy selfish creature she never got to be, and maybe secretly always wanted a chance to experience. Biting his neck, clawing at him as they laughed and rolled over and over. She let go with Joe. Let him pin her hands against the mattress and trail too many kisses down her neck. Mock growling and struggling to get away. "You're not going anywhere," he'd promised. And she hadn't. 

She let herself curl up against him on the couch. Dance around each other in the kitchen making dinner. 

Joe had allowed himself things too. Had let himself admire her face in slumber, kissing her nose in the morning. Had let himself push all thoughts of reality from his mind and focus solely on the bizarre refuge they'd found in each other. Let himself act on his wild impulses, sweeping her up in his arms when he got to the house, twirling around until she threatened to be sick before setting her down on her feet, turning on the radio and grabbing her again, waltzing her still dizzy and now grumpy self around the living room. Let his fingers trace patterns around her ankles as he massaged her feet and helped her undress for bed. 

They'd given themselves over to that parcelled away fantasy. Not once ever considering that the effects of it might be something more visceral. That it might have a power of it's own. 

*******************

The way Joe is treating her now, still cradled in his arms where they crashed to the floor, fully clothed. Is a stark contrast. He kisses her mouth once and then pulls back to examine the effects, touching her face, stroking her cheek and watching with concentration as the lines fade. He caresses her hand and then pauses again, watching, waiting, before lifting it to his lips and she inhales sharply as a line goes racing away. It's methodical, almost medicinal, she would believe now, the way he's going about things. He purses his lips as he looks at her neck and meets her gaze briefly before he strokes it and places a few soft kisses there, eyes latched on to the effects. 

"So cold now Joe," she murmurs, still feeling week. He ignores her, carrying on in his clinical administrations. "Deliberate,"

"You don't want the alternative," he growls and her heart constricts. She doesn't mean to hurt him. But it's the only way she can handle this stranger than fiction thing going on between them. But they have a connection now, and they'd better see about finding a way to live with it until they can erase it completely. "Sorry," he grumbles, sweeping his hands up her arms. "Sorry, it's just. I screwed up."

"We did,"

"I should never have---"

"Neither of us are innocent here. There's enough guilt to share on this one." 

"I don't understand how it works, why does it do this," he gestures to the fading veins on her arms, "but moments ago it did this," and his gaze falls on her cheek. It's faded the most there, didn't have enough time to settle because he's been....tending it so consistently, but they're both worried the power will regroup and attack her again. He keeps gazing into her eyes, his own expression so lost and Abbie reaches up to his collar. 

"We're in this together," she manages, "We'll take it step by step," he nods, pressing his forehead to hers. She surprises herself with tilting her head up and brushing his lips with hers, just briefly. A blinding pain lances through her and something like a door slamming resounds in her skull. She curses, still gripping his shirt. "Damnit am I covered in it now?"

Joe leans back from her. "It's left your face entirely" he says. 

"Master Corbin," the familiar voice sounds around them and Abbie realizes she didn't imagine hearing the door. Crane looms over them, clenching and unclenching his hands at his sides, eyes full of fury. No doubt the way they must look, her a shambles in his arms and being held far too close. "I would thank you to unhand Miss Mills," 

Joe looks to her and shakes his head determinedly no. "Can't do it Crane. It's complicated."

"Complicated?"

Abbie shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath. "We've got to tell you something"


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments welcome!

"Crane put him down," Abbie snaps, staggering to her feet and finding enough strength to pull on Crane's arm which has Joe pinned against the wall, feet dangling. It's sheer luck and surprise that he managed to get the upper hand on Joe at all. She'd expected a fall out after telling him---but this, this reaction has caught both her and Joe off guard. Perhaps they suspected he'd be indignant with disgust for them both. But the swift violence of Crane grabbing Joe's collar, hauling him to his feet, raising him up and slamming him against the wall and eyes blazing. 

"You vile debauched man took advantage of Miss Mills. You have no honour. No sense of conduct, propriety. That you should take these same hands that fight in the name of saving the world, that fight on the side of the woman you lost and use them to touch her sister," he spits angrily and his grip tightens enough that Abbie honestly begins to worry about Joe's safety. 

"It's Joe, Crane," she stresses, exasperated and tugging on him again. "Our Joe. We trust him,"

"He is a turncoat of heart and I question his loyalties now," he huffs in response. "He has.....he has tainted and breached our bond. He overstepped." he gives Joe a shake and Joe's eyes narrow. 

"Oh this is rich," he sneers. 

"Do you care to elaborate Young, Master, Corbin?" Crane taunts. 

"Don't entertain him," Abbie interjects, meeting Joe's eyes she shakes her head once. "I'm not gonna ask again Crane. Get a hold of yourself and put Joe down."

"He---"

"He didn't do anything," Abbie snaps. "I'm just as guilty. You wanna throw me against the wall too? I participated in it, I chose it, I wanted it. Put. Him. Down."

That statement seems to daze him. Crane's hold relaxes and Joe's feet lower to the ground, just long enough for Joe to give him a hearty shove and to shake out his shoulders. 

"You, wanted, it?" Crane repeats slowly. His gaze passes over Joe from head to toe and he bristles. "You wanted him?"

"Two weeks," she says. "It was just us here. We could have made better choices but we didn't and now---"

"But you had me," Crane murmurs quietly. "Abbie you had me," 

Her calm evaporates. "Joe, give us a moment?"

"Gladly," and takes off down the hall. 

"And where is he headed?" Crane inquires, peering around Abbie and following Joe with his eyes. 

"That's not your concern right now, we gotta talk." 

"About which? Your questionable choices, the betrayal of your sister, our bond?"

"How in the hell does me sleeping with Joe betray our bond. Last I checked you don't have first dibs on my body." she jabs him in the chest. "Last I checked you don't even touch, me" 

"We are partners," he replies staunchly, voice tight. "We are fate entwined and we are to tend to one another. To see to each other's wounds. We are to sacrifice. We are to communicate and---"

"Ha!" Abbie laughs harshly. "Communicate? before or after a vanishing act?" she turns on her heel, running a hand through her hair. Maybe it's because she's so mad, but she's finding it far easier to stay upright now, she'd dare say she almost feels strong. "Sacrifice? SACRIFICE?" she nods her head. "You wanna talk about our duty to each other Crane? yeah, okay, let's go." 

"Leftenant I---"

"Shut up," she hisses, cracking her neck from side to side. "Let's talk about when I traded this century for yours to save your life. Alright? let's talk about that. I didn't know if I'd survive. I could have been damning well sold into slavery---but I did it for you. Because of 'our bond' 'our duty' we're 'partners' and I couldn't picture this fight without you. Couldn't picture my life without you in it. I went there and fought the odds so you could live another day---and where'd you go?" she laughs again, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. 

"I was not aware you felt a strain. I was.....I have no memory of that event even occurring....."

"You stabbed your wife to save my life and I guess that experience was so awful you couldn't bare to see my face,"

"Abbie, no, that's not,"

"You don't get to damn 'Abbie' me now, alright? You pull that shit every time we're in hot water. Like it's precious. Like it's worth something to you, but only if you're at risk of losing something. Only if you don't think you'll survive for there to be consequences. Like I don't deserve to hear my birth name unless you deem the occasion desperate enough,"

"I call you Leftenant out of respect," he retorts hotly, aghast. "I, I hold you in the highest regard---"

"Not high enough to write." she cuts in. "To call. You stumbled into my life, raving about headless men and witches like a freaking lunatic and I chose to believe in you. I stood by you, saving your wife, trying to believe in your son. You turned my world upside down Ichabod Crane and without so much as a 'by your leave' walked out of it like so much nothing. What kind of fool would it make me, to let you waltz right back in again after you left me the way you did? Tell me why I shouldn't want 'fences' and distance, so it doesn't hurt, here, like a damn knife, everything we've been through and poof! Now you see him now you don't"

Crane stands in shocked silence.

"And you let me push you away. Nothing is the same with us. We're roommates and friends, but that used to mean more than that. You know it. I've had months of hell since Jenny turned and this fight gets harder and work more demanding, and you're here now, fighting with me, but.....some wounds run deep."

"Abbie---"

"And then, for you to pass judgement, on me, on Joe---I've done every thing as close to right as I could manage and hell we're human. We screwed up I know that, but don't you come in here like you invented the word loyalty, like you can even spell it." there is anger coursing through her veins and she knows she is yelling. Suddenly the world is white and horrible screeching fills the air. Fire lights through her.

Crane narrowly dodges the howling black energy that comes hurtling toward him, diving to the floor. He swears he hears it speaking as it whizzes past him. Mine, Mine, Mine. He stays down a moment, panting, shocked, breathing hard, and when he finally glances up he sees that Abbie's skin is covered in intricate designs. Black inky curling script. He's just barely reconciling the horror of that demonic power and the sight of Abbie practically engraved with magic when he registers the new fresh horror of Joe trapping Abbie against the wall, sealing his mouth over hers. He gapes in disbelief. Joe tilts Abbie's head back, kissing her deeply, and her hands catch at him, like she's drowning. Crane's neck flushes and he clears his throat, loudly. He feels like a voyeur. He cannot watch and yet he cannot look away. Their kiss slows and Joe's hands drop to her waist. 

"Alright?" he whispers, peering into her eyes. Abbie's eyes still appear unfocused and he kisses her again, slower this time, his tongue darting out and finally the fog clears in Abbie's eyes. "Alright?" he asks again. Abbie blinks, still a bit dazed but nods slowly. Joe eyes her carefully as he steps back from her but he keeps one hand firmly locked in his. "Easy, easy," he murmurs. Crane watches as the lines on Abbie's skin fade, but they don't recede as they had earlier. They're still swirling and dancing on her skin, but at least not as heavily ingrained. 

"What is this?" Crane demands. 

"Jenny's last attack branded her," Joe explains, voice deathly calm. "Our...misguided time together, seemed to be helping reverse its effects. But it's alive or something. She tried to push me away earlier and it came back. Angry" he grits his teeth. "I'd just finished erasing it from her face and you upset her, and here she is again, covered in the stuff. It hurts her Crane. It's trying to claim her, and so far---"

"Your touch keeps it at bay," Crane sneers. 

"So far it seems to help," Joe continues, ignoring him. Crane ponders this quietly for a moment. He doesn't like admitting that Abbie's state already seems much improved due to Joe's...administrations. 

"This needs researching," 

"You think?"

They glare at each other silently. 

"You guys piss anymore and you'll flood the hall." Abbie mutters groggily. 

"I'm going to the archives," Crane announces through gritted teeth. "You, Master Corbin," he nods to Abbie, speaks with thinly veiled disdain. "Look after her, in whatever manner will reduce the effects of this....mark she bears" 

Joe raises a brow. "Are you serious?"

"We are witnesses," he replies. "....It's.......Abbie." he amends. "I...we....whatever it takes. We are a team. We....we make the sacrifices necessary." he turns his back again and marches for the door. "Don't." he starts, with his hand on the knob. "Don't let it claim her." Crane casts another look over his shoulder. "I'm trusting you. Don't make it in vain,"


	6. Chapter 6

"Did Crane just give me permission to screw you into good health?"

"Oh Joe," Abbie laughs wearily as she crashes on the couch. "Stop it,"

"No, I just want to make sure my orders are clear, that I'm to kiss you senseless to prevent the rune from spreading."

Abbie shakes her head bemusedly.

"That, if your life depends on it, I am to spare you no pleasures to keep you breathing," he continues, joining her, swinging her feet up in his lap. 

"Now you're putting words in Cranes mouth," she chuckles, turning towards him, only to find that in spite of his joking tone, Joe isn't laughing. "What?" she asks. "Stop looking at me like something under a magnifying glass,"

*********************

He'd been in the backyard getting some air when he'd heard Abbie raising her voice toward Crane. Heard the screeching and felt the hairs on his arms stand on end when he'd gone sprinting into the house and had found Abbie unleashing that terrible power on her fellow witness. The glittering dancing magic painting her skin. It had all felt too familiar, the sounds, the heat in the room, and he did the first thing he could think of. 

When he'd grabbed Abbie and spun her around, pinning her to the wall, he'd glimpsed the eerie glowing white of her eyes. Had remembered the only other face on which he'd seen eyes like those before. He'd crushed his mouth to hers. Trying desperately to push, to chase away whatever curse seemed to determined to make Abbie it's vessel. 

She'd been so cold, at first. More thing than woman. He'd cradled her neck, tipping her head back and was getting nothing back until he tried to slow himself down. Tried to be sweeter. To kiss her not like a sloppy hook up in a bar but the way he had been kissing her for two weeks. With soft lips and gentle partings and a passion that would eventually damn them both. 

Then she had reached for him. 

Her grip had been too strong and a shot of pain had made him fear she would snap his wrist before her hold relaxed and she began to kiss him back with urgency. As if she was suddenly awoken to the effect it was having in ridding her of the dark energy and she was eager to help him fight it off. Feeling her wake up, he'd pulled back, her gaze still looking milky hazy, and another kiss, a quick taste and the fog had cleared. 

The markings were still there, more defiant now, but still, still relinquishing her from their hold at least. But there was still one moment when her eyes had twinkled, just briefly, before she'd begun to speak.

He knew it for the sparkle Abbie had always warned him about in her sister. 

********************

"That power, it sounded like Jenny's last attack." he explains solemnly. "Your eyes were white," 

Abbie let's the words sink in. 

"I'm scared for you," he says, reaching for her hand but Abbie pulls away. 

"Don't"

"what?"

"Whatever you were going to do to 'kiss it better' I can't....knowing what I know, what we did...I can't be handled like a chore Joe. Like a job, I--"

Joe gives a derisive snort. "What you want romancing now?"

"I don't know what I want this, thing, muddles everything. I don't know if what I want....wanted, has always been tied to this thing. My body's own weird defence mechanism. I can't trust my own body right now and that's scary. What I feel...that could just be desperate gratefulness that the pain goes away."

"Or?"

"Or I couldn't tell you because I'm compromised. All I know is, you can't treat me like a patient."

"But that's what you are now, and I'm.....I'm going to be your doctor,"

"If you start singing sexual healing so help me," 

Joe sighs, drumming his fingers along her calves. It's oddly soothing. Maybe just nearness can be enough, without creating a more fantastic mess out of everything. 

"All I'm saying Abbie, is if you need more from me, just say the word. I won't hold back. Whatever you need." 

Those are dangerous words for him to utter, so easy for her to take advantage of. 

Abbie worries that the time will come that she might do exactly that.


	7. Chapter 7

Well, the runes don't like Crane. 

When he returned he'd been very adamant that he have a chance to examine them himself. The "contact site" as he had so eloquently put it. He'd found them in a far less compromising position this time, companionably sitting in the living room, Joe watching the news, Abbie poring over leads in a new case. She hopes they can have this resolved before it actually starts to conflict with her job. 

Crane had come in, cautiously this time. Deliberately loud and slow in his footsteps. Perhaps expecting to find them in the middle of a sex romp, clothes strewn all over the room, heavy breathing and sweaty skin. He'd seemed pleasantly surprised that they had been doing absolutely nothing while he was gone. Although he did speak with Joe for a tedious five minute stretch about how contact seemed to be affecting the mark. After nodding and listening to Joe, he'd peered curiously at her. 

But you had me. Abbie you had me, he'd said earlier. Now eye to eye with him she begins to wonder what he really meant. Crane has always been steadfast in being a shoulder to lean on but surely he hadn't been implying a willingness to share her bed. 

If duty demands it though---and she clips the thought.

"I apologize for the impropriety Miss Mills, but if you could---" she'd guessed his line of questioning and had gracefully swooped the shirt over her head. She heard him gasp but it was hard to place whether out of horror or astonishment. He'd seen her shirtless once before, but that seems impossibly long ago now. And, she's riddled with magic writing now too, that's probably a sight to see. "Oh dear," he mutters, reaching to trace the pattern when Abbie feels a warmth, like a flare pulse through her back and Crane draws back with a hiss. She glances over her shoulder to find him staring in bewilderment at his blistered fingers. "Oh, dear." he murmurs again. He looks from his injury to her back. Joe knits his brows together, perplexed by the reaction, he reaches for the same place but nothing happens. He looks to Crane again, flattens his palm against the skin on Abbie's back and she feels a gentle wave pass through her. He removes his hand. 

Crane notices the breakage in the line. Screwing up his face he touches her back again and Abbie feels a red hot heat shoot through her, and then Crane yells and reels away, cradling his hand. He glares at the designs on her skin, knitting and reshaping, weaving over again the place that Joe just healed and pooling where Crane touched. 

Abbie grunts with the pain of it. Now not nearly as assaulting as it is annoying. Wearying, like when your limbs are sore from a workout, the way they burn. That's what this is now. A steady burning sensation which could be worse, she admits, but she wishes she wasn't experiencing it at all. "I don't think it likes you," she says calmly.

"No it would seem not," Crane agrees, rising from wear he had kneeled beside her on the couch. "But now I have some more, information to go on in my research.....I suppose Master Corbin will stay tonight."

Abbie and Joe's eyes connect. "I don't have to Crane," Joe starts.

"Nonsense," he interrupts, back still turned, voice too contained and controlled. "We've seen what good I am to her. It's malevolent toward me and makes her symptoms worse. For reasons as yet to be determined, I cannot serve the Leftenant in her time of need. Should she have need of....relief. You are most suited to aid her at present. In the morning I will resume my research. We will find a cure, for this affliction, Leftenant. Rest assured." he nods once, as if assuring himself, really, before he exits the room, calling a faint good night over his shoulder.   
*******************  
Upstairs that night Abbie reclines on the bed in her tank and shorts, quilt casually drawn around her as she examines the markings on her arms herself. They have a gradiant from where Joe had healed to wear the magic is its darkest, strongest. Like some sort of ombre tattoo. It could be very fashionable if it wasn't well, demonic in origin. Joe is brushing his teeth before getting in beside her. She listens to him rinse and spit and gargle for what must be the third time. He's stalling, she knows. For all of the whirlwind time they'd spent together, for his willingness to carry this on, something about him knowing now that there is a tangible effect from their affair is making him, careful. 

Even though he said he wouldn't hold anything back. 

She can sense there's a part of him now that wants to. 

Not because he doesn't want to help Abbie, but because, maybe, she thinks, he's feeling just as confused in his heart and his head as she is. 

She's not sure how much of this they can manage without it becoming a deeper, more complicated thing. And it doesn't help that this brand isn't like other lust driven magic. 

This thing craves connection. Closeness. Affection and care for it to abate. Openness. That's what pushes it away. She arrived at the conclusion when the power suddenly relented when Joe had kissed her in the hall. When he was merely near her, the rune seemed to sense it. The way it had lashed out at Crane, distrustful, angry.....

Abbie has those feelings toward Crane. She doesn't keep them on the surface, but it's there. This brand is bonding with her, she realizes with terror. And, if that's the case, if it's picking up on her unresolved hurt feelings with Crane.....then Joe......

His teeth now clean and sparkling enough to blind the blind he finally settles on the bed beside her, swinging his legs up and turning towards her, his head propped up on his hand. 

"Hey," he reaches over, tentatively, slowly, hand to her waist. "You alright?"

She nods mutely, clasping his hand, twining their fingers, just to be sure and there it is, the cooling rush. Gentle now. Not the fragmenting shard of ice she felt earlier and then he is drawing her into his arms, her head against his chest. She feels his hand drawing lazy patterns on her lower back, then drifting slowly upwards, and pauses there, waiting. 

"It's us, isn't it," he says. "This thing, it....it wants us like this."

"I think so."

He pulls back slightly, meeting her gaze. "So what are we supposed to do? It punishes you when we're not together, but then....this was also Jenny's attack, what could motivate her to do this?"

"It doesn't make sense," Abbie agrees, thinking momentarily how absurd is it she's having this conversation while in his embrace in her bed. Easy as a Sunday morning. "Because....then, are we supposed to fight it? Pulling away means it comes back stronger, to claim me......I would have blasted Crane today given a chance. What's the benefit to her of either pushing us toward each other or turning me into a beast? What are our options?"

"Unless it's to drive a wedge between you and Crane." 

"She....she couldn't have known....you came on to me,"

"I just, I wanted to be there for you, with you. All I had was me,"

"But only because you'd seen the rune." Abbie sits up. "What if it's all been orchestrated by the mark?"

"Are you trying to say it enchanted me?" he rises too and there's something confrontational in his tone. 

"It would explain....everything. If it was designed to divide me and Crane,"

"You two have been divided, for some time,"

"Joe,"

"You amaze me. The theories you'll come up with so you can sweep our time together under the rug."

A pulse. A warning. A dull heat. "Joe," she warns.

"I know it's not ideal, but I wasn't playing make believe. I never thought of Jenny during that time, did you think of Crane?"

It's coming from her feet. "Joe, stop,"

"Just, let's agree this is screwed up but can we stop pretending we didn't have our faculties intact? I wasn't drunk or anything Abbie. I was there, awake, the whole time,"

She knows this feeling now, the way the power starts to gather and prepare to lance out into her limbs like preparing for war. It does this when Abbie's incensed, when buttons are pushed, when it thinks she's going to lose control. But she knows it now, knows the way to deal with it.

Abbie doesn't want to examine this later. She'll deny it to her grave. 

But she grabs Joe's collar, swinging a leg over him and begins to kiss him slowly, hands caressing his face, trailing pecks down his neck. "I know you were awake Joe," she whispers, rubbing his arms, feeling his hands come up to her hips. She won't want to talk about this later. She wishes she could lie, but this power, it knows falsehood, it knows deceit, so what she says next is an astonishing, insane truth. "Being with you, it's like some dream." She cannot even believe she's saying it. Maybe the rune IS enchanting them, because she can't mean these things can she?

But wasn't it true that during their time she'd had only good times? Laughter and affection and companionship? 

Joe kisses her back. They are taking their time. They aren't thinking about dark magic and demon scripture sprawling over her skin anymore. Even though Abbie started this wholly to prevent another onslaught of magic, the fire had quickly dimmed and now this is all them. They can't claim medical procedure come morning. 

He rolls them over, fingers grazing the hem of her top. "Then don't wake up" he murmurs, capturing her lips with his again. Her shirt goes over her head and she sighs. She caves. Whether to the strange draw of the rune or to her own sick heart she doesn't know. His hands are so gentle. "Don't wake up"


	8. Chapter 8

The night ahead of them is long.

Long enough, to have time to consider and abandon this. 

Yet.

Long enough too, to indulge themselves in each other. To fall into that slow, torturous rhythm, her legs wrapped around his waist, Breath all ragged whispers and gasps. Cries muffled in shoulders, and then mouths that seek the other again, sweetly soothing as they ride out their waves. He moves to draw away but Abbie latches on tighter, nails scraping his back. She is too raw and bare after what they just did. What she just chose with a clear head. Demon runes be damned, she could have stopped and didn't. Could have let Joe pull away after but here she is, keeping him in place, inside, grasping his face and kissing him again, his jaw, his neck. 

She doesn't want to be cold. Doesn't want the frigid moment that comes after, when she'll feel wrong and guilty for this. When she'll question how much damage they have done. What becomes of them when they've found a cure. 

The moment when this will feel like another treatment. 

She doesn't want conditional affection. Doesn't want medication with an expiry date. 

But does she want Joe? 

She knows only that she can't bare for him to pull away now, like a deed done, a job completed. It's cruel and sick and twisted, but she needs to know that he wants this at least. Even if Abbie doubts her own ability to return it---how can she even contemplate that possibility?----she needs to know he's caught up. That she could hurt him---God but she doesn't WANT to hurt him----but that power, that leverage, when did she become so greedy? she just needs to know, that it's her. 

Not just that he was lonely. 

But she was, just lonely.

Not that she's infected now and he has to.

Abbie cannot tolerate someone being obligated to her. 

Of all the horrible things, the awful, unconscionable things, Crane would be so disgusted with her for thinking it, entertaining it, she needs him to want her. Enough to allow this. To stay right there, joined to her, and to keep trading kisses and for him to murmur "Yes" into her hair. 

Abbie didn't know she was hungry. Not like this. She begins to wonder if she's always been a monster inside. Maybe this has nothing to do with the rune at all. Maybe it's just giving her the excuse she needs. 

*********************  
Joe's feelings toward Abbie have always been teetering between admiration and disdain. It hadn't been easy, suddenly stepping down from his father and watching her rise up in August's eyes. Watching him craft and mould her, not him. Into someone purposeful. Driven. 

He'd watched in fascination, jealous fascination. Wanting to know, what was it about Abbie. What made her special? To complicate matters she was too pretty with a serious demeanor that would make her come across as unapproachable. Until she'd smile. Or laugh. And then Joe's jealousy would evaporate, shocked by the warmth and glow of her face when she was amused, feeling betrayed in himself when his own heart would flutter, just a beat. 

It had been too confusing, liking/loathing Abbie Mills. 

Knowing it wasn't her fault for taking up his father's time. Being the special thing that August hadn't seen in him. He understands it now. To a degree. Yes, he supposes he was protecting him. But tell an irritable adolescent that. 

Leaving had been easy. 

Coming back to Sleepy Hollow, a monster, an infected abomination, and finding himself once more before Abigail Mills, now the only person who could help him with his affliction---had not been welcome. She'd had the audacity to grow more beautiful, over the years. Full lips and sparkling eyes, a smile hiding in the corner of her mouth if you'd be so kind as to give her a reason to use it. Voice melodious and confidential and talking to him like she knew him, understood him. Reaching out to him. Being there. 

It might have been the Wendigo, dormant and lurking, that had wound him tight and thrumming with tension, with pent up frustration toward the father he lost to her and Jenny, that had wanted to crush her against the wall, hand caressing her throat, eyes burning into hers, wanting to demand hotly in her ear, why his life seemed fated now to keep revolving around Abbie Mills. How long must we orbit, he'd wanted to know. Before you know all of my secrets, even the ones you're not supposed to have, and yet I know none of yours. How long before we both have things we shouldn't. Before our burdens are the same. Our torments. Our pain.....and then.....

how long before we laugh for the same reason. Before we share the sunrise. Before I can know what makes you so special. 

Before you can know I'm special too? 

He had thought the time had come, after, when the curse had lifted, and she'd clapped him on the shoulder and their eyes had locked. He thought then, maybe, they'd recognize one another. 

Time passed. And then there was Jenny.

Jenny had taken Corbin's time too, but never before his very own eyes. She had been on the outskirts. Hadn't had time to develop complex contrary feelings toward her. She'd been on the outskirts of his father's relationship with Abbie too, in that way. Maybe that's why he'd seen her as a fit. Jenny was tough as nails, but in so many ways, easier to open up to. She didn't wall off and compartmentalize the way Abbie is prone to do. She didn't assess. She did. 

And it would have all been well and good, until the shard. 

Abbie had told them to leave it alone. 

And the child in him, the confused, half adoring half abhorring part of him had bristled at the idea of Abbie somehow directing his life, having impact, having say, again. Had the command come from anyone else he might have actually listened. But something in him had wanted to go against Abbie. 

To have his secrets.

To have things of August Corbins she DIDN'T have. 

To have information she'd need, want. To have pieces of her puzzle. 

But that had backfired. And here he was again, fighting by Abbie's side for so many months, and forced on multiple occasions to be faced with her strength and beauty and dawning understanding of what, and who, Abbie truly was. 

Were Jenny among them still, his mind would be too full to revisit those thoughts, ideas, contemplations. Days too energetic and weary, feelings too much bound up in her to start turning and reforming into this clearer, betraying thing. 

Were he not so hardheaded, had he not defied Abbie just to defy her, Jenny wouldn't be demon driven and he'd had never had that chance. 

That wretched, shameful chance, to, at last, let him do something about what he felt for Abbie.

This doesn't clarify anything, unfortunately. It doesn't make anything easier. But it makes him wake up, makes him present. Makes him check in with himself every time lips meet and suddenly discover, those jealous bitter things have gone. They exist as facts, but not fuel for dislike. 

He cannot help but think, now, as she traps him against her body and his hands caress her skin, that his questions have been answered.

Now I know all of your secrets, the words thrum in his mind. The way she touches him and reaches for him tells the tale. Now you know mine. The way he holds her, whispers, "Abbie," is clear. 

We have each other now when we shouldn't. We share this burden, it is ours. 

We know laughter together, and have shared sunrise. 

As he pulls back again, her eyes train on his, glittering in the moonlight shining in through the window. He presses his forehead to hers. 

Now we know how special we are, together.


	9. Chapter 9

The moonlight plays across the planes of his face. His eyes are bright and their noses are touching, practically breathing into each other's mouths. Her fingers dance across his cheeks. 

What are you thinking, she almost asks. Do you want this? How can you want this? What about Jenny, my sister? If she were here would you want me? 

Would I have wanted you to?

She stops herself though, knowing there is no right way for Joe to answer that question. It's either he'd have chosen her regardless and would break Jenny's heart, or he never wanted her to begin with and they are merely people caught by circumstance. 

And that should be fine. 

That was, is, after all, exactly what she's been trying to make clear to him. That in any other case, this would never have happened. Had it not been for the branding, they would have carried on fighting companionably side by side. In time, maybe once they'd gotten Jenny back, she'd have gotten around to finally giving Ichabod Crane a piece of her mind. And the next battle, the next time there was injury, he would be tending to her, as he should. Duty bound and fate entwined and all other spiritual and divine tethers that seemed to dictate that her life is inexorably linked to Crane. 

If only he had remembered that before he took flight. 

But do you want Crane, here? she asks herself. Joe's eyes flutter shut and so do hers, still breathing in the other. She tries to picture Crane here. Skillful touch and burning kisses, and it's easy. It's so easy. He'd know her and she'd know him. It would have been a homecoming. Right. Destined. 

But how well has Destiny served you, so far? She soaks in the heat of Joe, the smell of him, breathes in, exhales. Is destiny always, right? 

Doesn't everything happen for a reason? Is chaos not in itself its own careful study in organized ruin? 

She tries to track down a time when she ever viewed Joe this way. Ever felt a charge. 

****************  
His eyes had glowered when she'd tried to explain to him that his father had, indeed, loved him. That she wasn't, had never been, in fact, trying to take his place. The air had been thick with tension. His gaze piercing, as if trying to see her, into her, through her. And she'd matched him, because Abbie Mills doesn't back down. There had been a flicker then, when she'd understood his confusion, the feeling of being adrift. She'd wanted to embrace him, draw him near and to tell him, I'm here, Joe. I've always been here. You have me. I've got you. We were always his and now we can be there for each other, we can repair that now. But it's your call.  
**************  
Abbie is sure now that she hadn't meant those thoughts, would never have interpreted those thoughts to mean this. 

Though she can't deny it's seems a strange fit. He does have her, here, beneath him. Effortlessly caged in. Her resolve is so fractured. Her mind and heart splintered six different ways, there is nothing within her at this moment that would refuse him. 

There might still be a bell going off, chiming in the back of her head relentlessly, "wrong" "traitor". 

But selfish memories would come back to her. These hands that she is no longer sure she can trust would still map his body and her own form, familiar to him now, would still bend to him. 

There is more, though. 

Dancing in the halls and preparing meals. 

Easy silence and something earthy, not cosmic, not beyond her comprehension, not an element in the grant design. She had laughed herself to tears with him, not just while Crane had been gone, but over the span of the past couple months. 

Joe is no stranger, at the end of the day. He is a friend. A comrade. How had Abbie failed to see then, that Joe had been filling in all of the cracks?

Sturdy, loyal, Joe. How many times had she pulled him away from an attack, fear telling her don't lose him. Not him too. 

"I'm none of the people you need most Abbie but there's me. I might count a little?" he'd said. And if she dares to be honest, it was almost that night. 

Joe has lingered in her mind and life as a last call connection. The closest thing to what remains of August Corbin. One of the few who have known her longest. 

Joe Corbin is a bridge she has always wanted to cross.

She hadn't ever known that this, all of this, them, is what might lay on the other side. 

I might count a little?

For every time she'd ever seen his hurt eyes when August shooed him out of a room, every time that she caught him eyeing her in the kitchen while she helped make dinner. Every time that his gaze flicked to Jenny when she caught him looking at her. For every moment they had ever been alone, grieving, wanted to reach out to the other, to understand the other half of the puzzle, how, if, they could ever fit in one another's lives. For all of those times when they should have been less stubborn youth and therefore, now, less reckless adults. 

"Yes," she whispers softly. "More than a little."

A tear lands on her cheek. A silent thing rolling from beneath his lashes and splashing on her lips. 

"More than a little Joe," she repeats, tasting his tears. She feels a warmth in her chest, watches as the black veins, for just a moment, pulse white. 

********************

Crane made himself scarce early in the morning and returned in the middle of them making breakfast. A decidedly triumphant, if not grave look on his face. 

Warily, Joe offers him a cup of coffee. "What are we working with Crane?"

"A Hollow Heart Rune"


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments please!

"what's it do Crane," Abbie drawls, impatient already with his dramatic pause. Hey, a voice niggles in her brain. You used to love those pauses. Yeah, well, people change, she answers herself. 

"Ah," finger thrust into the air he dashes out into a hall and returns with a book, plunking it on the dining table. Joe scoots closer in his seat, coffee in one hand and Abbie draws nearer, her fingers absently catching at Joe's beneath the table. They share a quick look as if checking in with the other. Is this okay? the gesture seems to ask. 

They know cries of passion and bodies but something like holding hands now suddenly seems too dear. Perhaps because she'd seen Joe cry last night in her bed. Perhaps because last night she thought she might have at last seen Joe. Crane watches them, barely concealed irritation flitting across his face before he flips to the desired page. 

"You are familiar with the phrase, 'Misery loves company'" he half asks them and then continues to answer himself. "Well that is the exact purpose of the hollow heart rune. This is a rune for treachery, betrayals, turncoats, it seeks out the darkness in ones heart, feelings of...." and he trails off here, gaze sliding toward Abbie. "Mistrust. Loneliness." he swallows and barely manages to get his voice around the word, "Abandonment," 

Abbie chews her lip. She has felt all of these things in a never ending cycle it would seem for years. She doesn't think she's ever been rid of it, buried it, probably, but some inkling of it always bubbles to the surface. It was the reason she'd walled out Danny so long ago. The reason why she got so angry about Crane leaving, so torn to bits about losing Jenny to the other side. Not to mention the dull resounding grief of people she's lost. The rune is merely living off of what resides in her. Unresolved, raw and gaping. "It's purpose, after tapping into these emotions, harnessing them, turns the victim. Overruns them with this aching reckless hollow feeling until it drives them to---"

"Seek others like them. Makes them willing to do anything to overcome it. Spread it even," Abbie concludes. "This. This is Jenny's way of calling for me, isn't it."

"I believe there is some part of the Miss Jenny we know and love still tangled up within that demonic power. Her intent has been skewed and ill wrought. But she used that rune to summon you. She had hopes to drive you to her side. It means some part of her, however.....twisted....still wants her sister back."

Abbie's eyes water. "Jenny's trying to reach out to me, through that darkness, to join them."

"Join her. I believe she is tormented, not wholly herself, she wishes---"

"Pain? she wishes me pain? I didn't need help with that Crane I have pain in spades," her grip tightens just enough on Joe's hand that he winces before squeezing back. 

"You and Miss Jenny have many shared woes and horrors. It is one of perhaps your strongest bonds, your joint pain. It's horrible what she has done but it seems the only way she knows how, now, in her current state, to reach you. The only way she can use those powers is to remind you what you share, to bring you back to her."

"That doesn't explain why...." Joe starts, glancing at Abbie's runes, now a shimmering white. "Why....what affects her."

"Miss Mills harbours, rightly so, ill feelings towards me," Crane admits. "I encourage the runes ire. It feeds on our...tension. It consumes it. However, affection, bonding, as you and Miss Mills have done," he explains, a flush creeping up his neck. "It....it is possible it gives her..."

"Stop," Abbie cuts him off, because she can't bare for Crane to try and explain the irrational logic of her heart. She can piece it together. It's clear and stupid. Being with Joe gives her feelings of closeness, something resembling safety, overpowering the darker feelings in her heart, chasing them out into the light. Where the rune works to carve out her core with these haunting sorrows---Damn it, she curses, dropping Joe's hand as daintily and gently as she can and takes measured calm steps away from the room, keeps her voice steady when she says "Stay there, I'll be right back" she's trying to be calm and sensible and not give this rune any indication that there's even a hint of despair or worry, nothing to encourage it. She just needs a moment to come to this realization slowly on her own. 

Where the rune works to leave a gaping whole, Joe, memories, horrible awful things she shouldn't have and should have rejected every time were she not so greedy for it--Joe has filled them. Has been filling her heart. That's what this means. 

She's not just a selfish beast like she had hoped. She's a damned woman, the sort that she has always despised. She won't name it, dares not, but she has to give herself this. It's not just that she wants an escape anymore and he happened to be available. 

Abbie feels something for Joe. 

And yet, this rune, right now is her only tangible connection to her sister. If she were to give in, just a little, would it take her to Jenny? Is there any possible way that on her sisters turf, she could lure her out and away from the power of the shard and finally, finally get her back? 

Only to tell her what? 

While you were out, I was screwing Joe. I liked it. I think a sick part of me wanted it. Still wants it. Forgive me? 

She doesn't know what to do. Her options are grim, yet she remains calm. She must remain calm. Her markings are shining again, a sort of white power that she can't understand and worries can only mean more trouble. 

In the kitchen, Joe and Crane stare at each other over the table. Not so hostile as the day before, but there aren't about to be olive branches between the two anytime soon. 

"So what it comes down to, is either we....heal....."

"You, heal," Crane interjects curtly. 

Joe swallows. "Either, I heal Abbie." he tugs his collar nervously. "And we lose the connection, the only connection, the only sign that Jenny is trying to reach out."

Crane nods grimly. 

"Or, or," Joe blinks rapidly, having a hard time trying to process this wicked ultimatum. "Or, we let it claim her, and hope by some miracle she can get Jenny back from the other side. Like an inside job."

At last Ichabod's eyes water and nods again. "Miss Mills will want us to find another way, there must be one---"

Abbie has taken several deep breaths and reenters the room calmly, levelling her gaze with each of them. "Not this time Crane. I can't lose this chance to reach my sister."

"Abbie," one of them choke. She's not sure which one, both of them wear such stricken looks on their faces. 

"I have....I have to let it do it's thing. I'll get Jenny back," she says firmly. She doesn't believe it, not really. But someone has to have hope in this room with two men looking at her like a dead man walking. "I won't let this get away from me. If she's reaching out in anyway in there, I have to answer her. I owe it to her. I'm getting my sister back." she locks eyes with Joe across the table. "We'll deal with everything else after that."


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ichabod pov
> 
> angst. 
> 
> overthinking.

He left because he was not a man accustomed to being handled with care. 

Because, in a past life, he had been a man of valour, command, some prestige. A man of direction, purpose and clarity where his loyalties were and who was loyal to him. Even waking in this new century and finding himself so egregiously indebted to Abbie had still not shaken his core quite as the events of that one fateful night when choice----

One choice.

One infallible decision that had to be made and no other outcome could be possible----had turned on its head, everything he understood about himself, to be true. 

It is one thing to be gracious enough to accept aid, guidance and direction in a new world, to take on a new mission and pursue it with vigour, to have a comrade in arms who was a match, no, better, than any of the men he had known in his past. One thing, for soldiers, as they do, to console and talk the other through the horrors they had seen---in stilted tones---because there is little time for tears and outbursts although certainly they allowed them. 

Yet Ichabod Crane has always been sure of 'right' 

Always sure that, opposing troops, demons, monster, were wrong, evil. His judgement had long been divided clearly in black and white. Friend and foe. 

Making the decisions as a captain would and living with them in private later yet still he had not been prepared for the betrayal of Katrina. 

She had given him reason, of course, when she held Abbie choking in mid air. Yet, how quickly she had turned he still fails in ways to understand, and the rash action he was forced to because of it. 

Worse still, however, was the careful assessment in Abbie's eyes that followed days after. The gentle prodding. Which he knew by then, he knew her ways and how they usually have to draw one another out into the light. 

But he could not wrestle it while around her. 

He could not resign the swift press of knife into his wife with a controlled warm voice reaching to him "Crane, Crane?" when she would force a mug of tea into his hand. 

One thing to kill his wife. Quite another to be continually faced with subtle questioning if he might have regrets about it. That he might have judged poorly. 

But he HADN'T

When there is no options how can there be room for excuses? When right is made by an action that within Ichabod Crane, until that moment, the notion was unbelievably wrong? 

He'd killed a dream he should have long ago forgotten when Katrina had collapsed in his arms. Had turned toward his new reality in the shining face of Abbie who held strong, incredibly resolute and had demanded him be present. "Ready, Captain?" 

But he hadn't been. 

Wouldn't be until he could get a grasp on his mind and what had occurred without being......distracted......by Abbie.

Abbie would never come across as a coddling sort but she did seek to comfort him, as a friend and partner would, but he wasn't prepared to tell Abbie he was waging a unique battle within himself at that time. 

That he feared loss and desperation had driven him to invent new dreams of her. With her. 

He feared he might tell her how beautiful she was for the sheer joy of having someone to tell it to. He feared he might reach for her hand and stroke the back of it gently as he did once, when his love for Katrina had been young. For the pure enjoyment of having a woman's hand to hold at all.

He feared replacement.

He feared fitting her into a mould.

Making her something she's not. Could not be. 

He feared shadows hovering over them always while he subconsciously rearranged spaces in his mind, allocating her new purpose in his mind and heart----but only to fill the gap. 

Only to fill the vacancy. 

He didn't think it was fair, with all of Abbie's care, to thank her with packaging her neatly into the whole left behind by Katrina's death. He could not take kindness and twist it to affection because he was grieving. He must not.....assume that the logical course was for her to take his side next, as confidante, as partner....a space in his bed? 

Surely it is grief. 

Surely, he needs to mourn alone. 

He left because he could not fathom a world in which his own heart could be so quick to shift loyalties, as Katrina had done from him to their wayward and dangerous son. 

That he too might turn, so unpredictably. By whatever provocation. 

She'd have understood, had he told her, he knows. Knew it when he woke up that night, bag in hand and called for the cab, headed for the airport to catch the flight he'd booked the week before, all without telling her. Even then while he did it, he knew was being the worst sort of man, but he couldn't stop the need to put distance, he needed a clear head. He needed to travel without memories of her embracing him before he boarded and her voice telling him to take care of himself while away. 

He needed to do this alone. 

He also needed to know......if he could walk away. 

From the mission? From Sleepy Hollow? From Abbie? 

None of it. All of it. 

He'd thought it a test. If he could turn away, vanish, for a while, perhaps the troublesome rerouting of his feelings for Abbie were nothing more than a passing fancy. Something that would wane with distance. And it had. He'd been consumed with getting his footing abroad and while his search for purpose and curiosity, did, inevitably, land him back in the middle of End Of Days investigation and Witness Prophecies, the fog had cleared enough that he could call up the image in his head as less of a Next Step---

Katrina's dead, 

Abbie's here,

She's the only woman in your life now, go on and change everything and love her---

and you might turn on her too, if the mission demands it---

like the knife to your wife----

More like the comfortable memory of home. Less frightening urgency and rampant feelings that then had kept redirecting themselves to her. He had wanted to throw her against the wall the night Katrina died.

To startle her with his roughness, to know the taste of her lips---to fill his mind with new memories and force Katrina----hands that would never lovingly stroke him again, eyes that would never be so fond, hair he would never wind around his hand in the throes of passion----but had chased the thought because Abbie was not a 'magic eraser' 

The idea of it had made him disgusted with himself after. 

So away Ichabod drifted. His mind discovered and Abbie receded, and he looked forward to reuniting in due time, with his muddled feelings in check, to continuing their mission. 

And it had been well when he got back. Customs fiasco aside. 

Abbie was FBI. They were roommates----a welcome companionable arrangement. He'd met Zoe, a dull, if not sweet woman who wanted to be charming, she did, and Ichabod had let her charm him, because she was light hearted, and he was so ready for something.....lighter, in his life. 

Lighter than the weighted gaze of Abbie which still made him a little too warm. Lighter than all of the complications therein that bound them together. Lighter than the world ending. Abbie had encouraged it even. It was all going well. 

He had his feelings in check. Abbie's fences had helped him in many ways reign in any wild emotions that had decided to rear their head---the irrational jealousy when he'd met Daniel Reynolds, for example---and Zoe was, truly, sweet, if not also an awkward bore. Like Himself. 

It was good to fight together. A little space between them, so there was no danger of Ichabod falling into that strange trap again----besides Abbie was so changed he couldn't begin to entertain more intimate notions had he a mind to. 

She was quicker to being short with him----which shouldn't have surprised him, the way he left---desired more distance----which again should not have amazed him. He'd brought many of Abbie's fences upon himself.

He might as well have drawn the line in the sand and said "build here".

The shard case had caused only more stress, Jenny gone he took up the post of wanderer of the world, hunting down artefacts. Joe a new more integral part of their band. He'd taken Sophie on a few of the missions, because she had a sharp mind---but he hadn't told Abbie that. 

He knew Abbie still smarted from Reynold's betrayal. 

Fully acknowledged he was committing a similar if not worse one by enlisting Sophie's help if he had to go away. 

He feared too much time with Abbie, wound so tight, weary and scarred from Jenny's possession, that he would reach for her and she would take him to bed.

To assuage the hurt. To mask the pain.

To fill the gaps. 

Just as he had feared making Abbie a placeholder, so he feared she might do to him. 

That in the end they would have forged a bond on a need to forget rather than a desire to create moments to remember. Their first kiss would always taste of sorrow and hurt and pain. 

The first time bodies twine would be wild and desperate longing to obliterate reality. And ever after that wondering if their collision had been an act of misguided passion or a kindling in their hearts. 

A needling doubt. 

But a fearful man is still a foolish man, at the end of the day, for where Abbie could not find comfort with Ichabod, she found it with Joe. 

Crane's anger is multifaceted and ten fold. 

The hurt he caused Abbie, the damage he had done to their own relationship for the worry their motivations would be impure, tainted and self seeking---Joe had thought NOTHING of that. 

Joe had not lain awake contemplating, if Abbie's hair felt like Jenny's, if her lips had a similar flavour. Joe had not considered, not once, that perhaps his body had reached for Abbie because Jenny's was flooded with demonic might. 

Abbie had thought NOTHING of that. 

Had not wondered if perhaps her fingers had longed to twine in Crane's hair instead of Joe's. Had wanted to taste the salt sweat on his neck instead of young master Corbins. 

More than anything Ichabod Crane is irritated that he could be so pandering and fickle and them not at all. 

That he over thought to the point of distraction and destruction alike, drove wedges deep between himself and Abbie and like nothing----

like nothing----

Abbie and Joe fell into bed. 

Were selfish indulgent creatures that now find themselves bound and confounded--because their faces are easy to read, plain as day---by the strange damning thing between them and consequences. 

Now they have kisses and strokes that will haunt and torment them with the true meaning and forever questioning the validity of their desire. 

But they shouldn't have them at all. 

If anyone should be haunting anyone it should have been him and Abbie.

It should have been them walking that tumultuous, unsure, road, full of tension and passion and messy indescribable things because they are Witnesses, partners in all things. 

That was his part in the burden to bare. 

Their destiny entwined, all of the complicated miseries therein, was to be theirs too. 

He sees that now.

He sees it too late.


	12. Chapter 12

He doesn't say any of that, of course. 

Instead he looks between the two of them, feeling a bitter satisfaction that there is a penalty to pay for their little affair---a fleeting thing because the alternative now is Abbie's determination to succumb to the wicked marking---he nods, turning his back on them and starts for the door.

Abbie's skin crackles with irritation. With anger. Coward, she's barely thought it before the black smoke and glinting sparks go racing towards him. Joe rockets to his feet, grabbing her arm. "Abbie!" he calls, but the energy is already gone, slinking around the corner. 

It's slower than her other outbursts. Less howling and menace. No, this time it is calculated and plotting. It hovers behind Crane a moment before his hand lands on the doorknob, so stealthily he doesn't notice it until it curls around his arm, his torso, around his throat, a smokey tendril twirling around his ear. "Deserter," it rasps. "Go on, dig deeper," it implores. Crane is paralyzed. His hand freezes, his breath slows. "Dig, deeper," it insists, the tone of the power becoming more insistent. Closing in around him, pushing, searching for a way into his skin, the part curling around his ear, trails to his jaw. "Deeper. Carve me out, Crane," terror courses through him, this power is sentient, it knows his name. 

In the kitchen, Abbie and Joe are held captive by time. They are immobilized. Her runes flare white, and Joe, linked to her, is aware of a tingling feeling in his palm where his hand is still latched to her. 

"Carve, out, my, heart, Crane," it hisses and the tendril slinks down, over his chest, level with his heart. "Here, right, here, push here," it exhales with relief as it pushes inward and Crane screams. 

A bloom of pain lances through his body. "Yes," it moans obscenely in his ear. He grits his teeth, his limbs crumpling beneath him. He breathes, horrified ragged breaths, trying to survive the assault. "Yes, Yes," it moans again. He cringes in the pit of his stomach. It's Abbie's voice. The wretched thing has bonded so deeply with her it's using her voice. "Oh, Yes, see right here, how, hollow," it pants, it's enjoying itself. 

He feels himself weakening. His ears flood with the sound of chatter. 

Abandoned. Why'd he just, leave. Does he regret saving me? Does he wish she were still alive? Do I pretend it never happened? How can I help him? Why won't he let me in? Why does he turn away? He just, left? Me? But I am here for him. Does he wish I was dead? I put my life on hold. I'll move on. Will he come back? It won't matter. This is just duty. Just a mission. We can heal. He just needs to grieve. He never let you grieve alone. Why does he need to be apart? Why does he rob you of duty? This is yours to bear. Why does he shun you? He left. He left. He jumped ship. You're alone. Is this goodbye? Move on. How far can I go when he's part of me? You're not part of him, see how easily he runs? Zoey is nice. He's jealous. He came back. I didn't think he would. He's so strange now. Don't let him in. You can't trust him. He'll leave. Zoey likes him. Focus, Mills. You're an Agent now. We'll need boundaries. We are different now. Focus, Mills. He left. He isn't the same. He doesn't look at you the same way. Does he not trust me? Does he blame me? Focus. It hurts. Focus. It. Hurts. You're strong. 

But.

It. 

Hurts.

It. 

Hurts.

IT. 

HURTS.

"Crane!" the power whines in ecstasy. It pushes deeper, working inside of him. He feels it all, the doubt, the fear, the emptiness. The pain. What he put Abbie through. Her struggle. "And you dare to be hurt," it coos, voice tender now as he breaks into sobs. "You dare to feel betrayed." it twists inside of him and he cries out again. "I wish I could make it stop, Crane, but it feels good, to hurt, you," one final thrust and the power recedes in a rush, dutifully flowing back into its owner and only then can Abbie and Joe move. 

Abbie blinks. "Joe?"

Joe finally tears his hand away, hissing with the effort. 

"Joe?"

"I don't--" he begins, but breaks off to the sound of laboured breathing. They spring into the hallway where Crane lies at the front door. Demolished and face wet with tears. 

"Crane?"

"Please," he wheezes. "Please, no closer." 

"Crane what happened?" Abbie demands, striding forward and Crane flinches, covering his head, shuffling away and backing himself against the wall. 

"Stay there, please."

"What is wrong with you?"

"Don't, TOUCH me" Crane screams at last, his call sounds like a lunatic raving. Abbie pauses. "I....I.....it's sentient. Or can be, if it wants too. It....our issues run deep, Leftenant, but....it .....you wish me harm"

"This is ridiculous," Abbie growls as she approaches him but halts when she sees the smoke rising off of him. He sees where her attention has gone and pulls aside his coat to reveal the smoking hole in his shirt. "What..." 

Joe pushes past her and begins to examine Crane. 

Her eyes well. 

"It.....I don't know, it looks like a bruise. Not a rune. It didn't choose to mark him....but it looks like it beat him up pretty badly. That power is fusing with parts of you and......"

"Turning it into power." she concludes

Joe bites his lips, meeting her gaze "This is what giving in is going to look like Abbie.It's going to take from you, and hurt others, it's going to be vengeful. It's.....it's going to become you. I don't think we can risk it."

"But Jenny."

A wounded Crane is a small price to pay. A voice wheedles in her ear. She knows this voice. It's the one that claims her, hissed Mine, in her brain. Bonding with her. Fighting for her. With her. More fiercely loyal in this short time than Crane had been. It's a small sacrifice for him to know the pain you have known. You must go to Jenny.....help her.....

Abbie takes deep breaths. "Look after him." she commands Joe as she turns away, storming down the hall to the washroom to splash water on her face. 

When she catches her reflection in the mirror, she pretends she doesn't notice the momentary white glow in her eyes. 

Go to Jenny. the voice dwindles away. 

You can do it, you can save your sister. 

Join, her.


	13. Chapter 13

Joe thinks to follow Abbie but he's distracted by the erratic heaving noise Crane is making trying to catch his breath. The professional in him tells him he needs to give Crane a full once over, figure out exactly how much damage was done and how deeply. 

The man he is, however mislead, can only think that after witnessing an event like that is that the last person who should be alone right now is Abbie. Abbie with the demon rune sprawling across her skin and wrenching away her essence so it can torment and torture Crane. Her fellow Witness. Her friend......her Crane. 

He'll ignore for now what it means that Crane could inflict so much pain on her with mere leaving. That Crane holds in him the fuel for this monstrous curse. 

That for all of the light and healing he thinks he's given Abbie, Crane is still strong enough to demolish that, eradicate it, entirely. 

"I didn't know," Crane gasps, he's been heaving like a man just rescued from the ocean since Abbie stormed off. As if he might never recover. "I. I didn't know, Master Corbin, that I----oh, Leftenant."

Yes. You. Joe thinks unkindly with his jaw set as he helps Crane to his feet. You fed that doubt inside of her and gave that rune a place to take up residence, you give the very thing that is destroying her sustenance. You.....you're practically helping it. He half drags Crane into the kitchen, heaves him into a chair. Goes for some water. "What did it do" he asks finally. When he is met by silence Joe turns to find Crane staring off into space with a far away look in his eyes, his head tilted, as if listening to someone. "Crane," he demands.

*************  
"Crane. Crane," The thing using Abbie's voice insists in his ear. "Look, you don't wanna talk about it, cool. But I'm here for you, alright?" It's a memory that the residual power has tapped into. His wrist is warm where Abbie touches it gently in his minds eye. "We're in this together," her face appears before him, cocked thoughtfully to the side, her encouraging smile. 

"But you weren't there for me," it whispers as the image fades away. "Oh, never mind, come here, Crane, come, ssssh. I know, I know, you're sorry. And you'll forsake me again in a months time and I'll forgive you, but it's alright. Because that's our way. Right? I've always been the stronger of the two," it whispers, as if it's comforting him. There's no pain with this visitation, nothing physical, but there's a bareness to it, like an unlacing of his brain, seams coming apart. He feels more tears running down his face before realizes he's crying. He knows he should fight it. He knows the episode in the hall was terrifying.

And yet it was the closest he had been to Abbie, even in all that raw violent pain, since his return. 

It was the broken silence, truly, that broke him, there in the hall. It was all of the caverns with their boulders rolled away and the windows and doors thrown open so the storm could come streaming in. It was all of the careful trinkets on the shelf clattering and shattering on the floor. The rune, in all it's malice and ill intent had brought him close to Abbie in ways the fences has prevented. 

He was gutted by it. Grateful for it. At least now he understands the depth. How many fathoms below he has sunk them both. 

"Crane. Crane," it starts again, as if on a loop. 

"Crane" a sharper voice cuts in and he locks eyes with Joe. 

"It's still inside me," he answers. "It's.....it's talking to me"

*************

In her room Abbie throws her head in her hands, pushing furiously against her skull. The rune has been showing her what it did to Crane downstairs. Has been helping her LIVE it. It shows her how it pulled her energy, her essence, her strings, leaving her suspended in time in the kitchen while it went to taunt Crane. It shows her how it wheedled and teased and forced him to his knees, crashing upon him all of her darkest, extreme feelings. It makes her feel the rush it got, the satisfaction and pleasure from making him experience her darkness. 

For you, it says. I did it for you, Abbie. He hurt you, and he needed to know how alone you were, how haunted. He'll understand now. He'll never forget. 

Her runes have been flashing black and white since she locked her bedroom door. Intermittently she is hit with a shock, a jolt through her system, but it's more like something waking her up. Starting, firing up and into life. There's a dull glow beneath her skin. 

Like Jenny. She thinks. 

Its happening, so soon. We only just discovered what causes this and---

I would kill for you. the magic cuts in. I will fight for you, stand with you. Make you strong. 

No. Abbie snaps at it and the markings settle for a moment, twinkling shimmering blackness swirling on her skin. This needs to be controlled, this transition can't just....come on her like this. 

How did it get so strong? she wonders. Where did it get the strength to override everything that---

Joe,

the name pulses steadily, the mark speaking to her again, voice low and stealthy. Yes, Joe would wear this mark himself if he could---isn't that why he so fervently mapped the way I twist and turn across your skin? Why his lips brushed against each line and criss cross, tasting, as if he thought he could drink me in and purge you?

It was working. Abbie grits her teeth as she mentally berates it. 

Yes. It concedes. Yes, greedy hearted thing you are, even leftovers, scraps, you'll take. 

That's not----

What do you THINK you are to Joe? it lashes back at her. Second best. Second tier. Just one rung below what his heart wants. You are number one to no one, Abbie. Can't you see that? 

Stand in for Joe.

Stand by for Crane.

Even, Danny...it prods. Even to him who has undermined you. You are, Second, Abbie.

Your title denotes it, does it not? The Second Witness. 

You are first only to your sister. To Jenny. She is the only one in your whole life that has never seen you as the after thought. Coward, that one time, a betrayer....then and now again too, it adds kindly and Abbie curses. But only she sees you as singular. Only she can ever understand what it means to stand in a shadow. You cast a long one, Abbie Mills. It's time neither of you spend your days standing in the coldness of others. Stand as one. Together. 

This has always been your fight.

Joe is an accessory with a penchant for broken girls. Likes to stitch them back up. Put them together. Why do you think he does what he does. You're projects to him, the both of you. 

Crane is an odd accomplice. A haphazard fool accidentally tied up in your tale. 

But Jenny. 

The demon appeared to you, both. It has always been about you. 

You want me to destroy things, you ARE the work of demons. 

Your destiny has been to your sister. And hers to you. The side you fight on has never been part of the deal. Destroyers. Remember that. 

"Abbie?" 

Don't you dare answer Joe. It cautions. Oh, he'll make you feel nice, and the power will fade, but he's only keeping you away from Jenny. From the power that is yours to share. Blood is thicker than water, isn't it? 

"Abbie?" her door handle jostles violently and Abbie rises toward it.

Do it and you'll lose her. The power ravages. It carves out its vessel. It must be shared and she needs you to bare it. Do not fail her again, Abbie Mills.

"Did Jenny really send you?" Abbie asks aloud, knees buckling as the runes brighten. The world goes blurry around the edges, like over exposure on film. "Is she in there? really in there?"

"The God is draining her," it insists and chooses then to show her more of it's power, flooding her again with the way it's leftover bits needle at Crane. Repeating doubts and terrors until it's like drumming in her brain.

"Abbie?" Joe yells. "Abbie who's in there with you?" he yells, alarm in his voice. 

She takes a step forward and the power pulses brightly in her core, over running her. 

Do it and you'll hurt him, it promises. I have enough to tap into within you here to do him real harm. The next wave rocks her to her knees, already stretching, pulling from her, preparing to perform its nasty trick once more on Joe.

"Stop," Abbie gasps, overwhelmed. "Stop....doing that. And I'll let you in," 

It sighs. Mine. It whispers. Mine, Mine, Mine. 

************************

"Abbie!" 

"Leftenant?" Crane hollers and him and Joe throw themselves against the wall until Joe finds and axe and hacks his way through the door. They pry and discard the splintered boards, stepping through and getting scratched and snagged in the process. 

"No," Joe says, axe clattering to the floor as he begins tearing through the room. "No. No. Abbie?"

"Leftenant?" Crane scans the room. 

I'm gone, Crane. The voice, hovering in his chest from the damnable rune answers him. See how it feels now, to be left behind? 

To not know where I've gone, what's become of me?

To not know if I'm ever coming back?


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> comments please!

Abbie wonders if this isn't her destiny after all, considering how easily and gently the dark power had unfurled inside of her when she'd let it in. It was warm and thick moving but with it's unsettling presence came a strength, a sort of internal armour. 

She knows, distantly, that it's hollowing her out. Fortifying her empty core against tenderness and sentimentality. The rune knows how strongly affected Abbie is by it, and for the first time, after it's encounter with Crane, it gleaned enough power to begin actually doing something more protective. Some thing that would be harder for Joe to break through, if he still believes himself a match for it. Her skin is alight. White glowing dancing devilry twists and turns against the backdrop of her flesh. A passing glance in a shop window and Abbie sees the wild feral, clearly other worldly thing she has succumbed to becoming. Her eyes are white and sparkling unnaturally. Her hair writhes in the air around her as if possessed of a life all its own. But what is more horrifying is how alive she feels within it. 

Powerful. Controlled. Indestructible. She pushes back as much as she can internally, keeping the power out of her brain, and it seems content enough with that. It's already coiled so tightly around her heart it fears little backlash should her mind suddenly revolt. The core is stronger.The limbs belong to it. She wears it now like a glorious hellish armour. 

Like ancient warriors going into battle. 

Abbie tells herself she is using this power to take her to Jenny, to charge towards her enemies and perhaps at last be on even footing for a proper fight, and get Jenny back. And not that she feels a sudden thrill from the idea of them pooling their power together and taking on the world that had once so wronged them and tore them apart. 

***************  
The minute Crane had explained that the power had spoken to him, was still communicating with him from the inside, Joe had taken the steps two at a time. Anything that could pull from its host and continue to live outside of its territory could only mean it was ravaging Abbie even further from the inside. Crane followed after him, two pairs of limbs springing and half dragging the other back down the steps in their hurry to be outside her door first. A rather intentionally landed misguided push had sent Crane stumbling back down a few, and Joe was at the door first. Rattling and banging and hearing Abbie's voice, whispering, grunting, something like a crash. Crane came up shortly after and then Joe took off back down the stairs and returned with axe in hand and neither one cared to worry about the upset it would cause when Abbie found they had broken her door. Consequences right now were totally irrelevant. 

The room was empty, once they were through. Joe's heart was racing a mile a minute. No. No. No. Not her too. No. 

Crane's coat snagged crossing the threshold but he couldn't be bothered for struggling and failing to understand Abbie's absence. Until the voice began to speak to him. 

Joe moved to the window at last, trembling with fear. What he had expected he didn't know. Maybe that the rune had driven Abbie mad and persuaded her to take her life, that he would see her sprawled on the ground below like a broken bird. Instead he saw nothing. 

Not a trace. Gone like a ghost like a whisper in the wind. 

"She's gone," Crane says at last, as though still having difficulty processing. 

"We....there has got to be a way. To track her. Something, anything."

Crane turns his ear inwards, listening for the ghoul inside there that likes to feed off of him and tease, but finds it now conveniently silent. 

"We need to find her. We're low on numbers and we need to widen our search,"

"I'm listening, Master Corbin," Crane answers, all propriety and respect suddenly, however briefly, restored in the face of this new emergency. 

"I say we call Reynolds"

"Absolutely not!" Crane objects. 

Joe scrubs a frustrated hand across his face. "I know it kills you to think there might be another man in the world who cares about Abbie, but an agent gone rogue will launch a man hunt and we'll have a better chance of catching Abbie,"

"And what do we tell her peers when they find her riddled with magic ink and shadows in her midst?"

"Deal with that later. But we need to spread out,"

"What we need, is a spell, or some way to discern her destination, without causing a public disturbance,"

"And who do you suggest we call?"

Crane takes a deep breath. He's not proud of what he's finally going to admit to, and certainly not looking forward to the judgment Joe is surely about to level his way. But they must take the chances. Any and all of them. "Miss Foster."

"Excuse me."

"Sophie. Foster. Master Corbin," he bites out at last, storming down the steps away from the incredulous glare that registers on Joe's face, whipping out his phone as he goes. 

"Come at me," she answers. 

"I must see you at once." he says urgently. 

"Crane?"

"No questions. Please. Our.....spot,"

****************

Her eyes flutter open and she gasps. 

"The fever's breaking," Pandora announces as she mops Jenny's brow. 

"But how long does she have?" her consort asks. 

Pandora's eyes pass over Jenny's suddenly frightened looking face, the skittish eyes. "Depends on the Rune."

"We should never have kept her this long," he says, watching them solemnly. 

"She was of use to us, proved resilient enough to wield both the powers of the shard and sustain you. Not to mention the part she has played in our fight. Would be a pity to see her obliterated now. She needs a help meet. To carry the load."

"I would just as soon drain them both."

"Patience." Pandora coos. Turning her eyes back on Jenny, stroking her hands fondly, she's grown tender toward the woman for all of her vicious might and loyalty to them in the past months. She views her almost as one would her own child. And if all goes well, she will have another to tend to. "It was not my intent to hold place in our new world for the sister. The Witnesses had their place.....but....I feel she has earned her keep in her time with us, beloved. May her sister come and restore her. I've always wanted strong daughters, be the tide in our favour, I will soon have them,"


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short chapter apologies!
> 
> this might be getting vaguely more canon compliant.

It had been poorly done, if you asked her. 

The handling of Nevin's mission, the fallout after, and now, Sophie huffs and brushes her hair back nervously. And now, this hush hush secret artifact business she'd managed to get herself caught up in with Ichabod Crane. She checks around for sign of him. 

'Their place' ironically, is outside of Nevin's old hideout. The place where she'd cornered him and he'd matched her turn for turn. There'd been the faintest challenge there, a crackle, that if she'd been a more fanciful woman she'd have called it chemistry. But Crane had since proved a distractingly odd man, who, even though she had developed a bond of sorts over the past few months, presumably because he was an aid to Abbie in some way and she figured helping him out with his strange relic hunts was....maybe Sophie figured it would be her way of making it up to Abbie, in a round about way.

For unwittingly undermining her position in the department---thanks for that Danny.

For interfering with her sister.----Thanks for that, Jenny.

For....for every way somehow her arrival had sent Abbie's world into a tail spin that she'd wanted no part in the destruction of. She saw a lot of herself in Abbie, similarities. She knew, if they'd ever been given the chance, they would have been great partners on missions. They have the same drive, same no nonsense flare. But Abbie shut down and closed off effectively after Jenny went on the run---that's what Crane had told her when he'd approached. 

"Miss Jenny has taken a leave from our company, since her fall out with Agent Mills about....the shard," he'd added, rather pointedly, and the smallest inkling of guilt had wedged inside of her then, and she'd consented. Had kept consenting. Moonlighting with Crane when she thought Danny wasn't looking. 

Yes, her and Abbie Mills lived similar lives though they didn't know it. 

Both of them women with one foot out the door doing 'extracurriculars' with Crane, and one foot in the office showing Daniel Reynolds there "Yes Sir, No Sir," best, sharp nods, cutting glances and staying out of the others way. Danny sensed the tension, she'd bet he was willfully giving them different projects to avoid further conflict. 

Yet. There she waits. Solid foot steps and flapping fabric herald Crane's arrival. He gives her a nod, a shuddering breath. "I thank you for meeting under short notice Agent Foster" 

"Give it to me straight, what are we looking for?"

"Who," Crane says, his voice tight and avoiding her gaze. 

Sophie waits a beat. "Someone missing Crane?"

"I have not been forthright with you, Agent Foster,"

"I didn't expect you had been,"

Crane's glances down at her, assessing before he swallows and continues on. 

Go on, Crane. The voice of the rune chooses then to waft to him, and he almost rolls his eyes. Go on and tell her every damn thing you and I have worked so hard to keep secret, it hisses accusingly, still borrowing Abbie's voice. He shakes out his shoulders and locks eyes with Sophie. "Our ventures, have never been, mere eccentricities. There is more afoot in our missions, has been, for some time," 

"I'm all ears"

********************  
Danny looks up from his desk when Joe comes in, a passing glance before his eyes flicker back upward and stands. "Can I help you?"

Joe advances wearily into the room, licks his lips. "I need to report a missing person,"

Danny's eyes narrow. "Has it been twenty four hours?"

Joe inhales deeply. "It's Abbie Mills"


	16. Chapter 16

"Roll out"  
**************** 

"So what you're trying to tell me is Abbie is possessed by a demon rune her sister attacked her with?" Sophie regards him carefully.

Crane twists his mouth bitterly. "For lack of a better word, yes" 

***************

Jenny. Jenny. The word echoes in her mind, shining like beacon. The rune pulses with it,coaxing her, yes, here, almost there, she needs you---when she enters the room all is quiet. She feels an absurd feeling of calm wash over her. 

Even seeing Jenny laid out on the slab of rock before the pond, as if already dead, she is calm in approaching her. Up close, Jenny's skin is spiderwebbed with red power crackling, sizzling, short circuiting inside of her. For whatever reason, at last the power is too much. She's sweating profusely. Her eyes snap back and forth, unable to focus, even as Abbie draws near. 

When she leans over her, they focus for a split second, and somewhere, deep, far away, the sister she knows looks back at her in wide eyed horrified shock. Before the power over runs her and they go still, deadly calm with some unspoken acceptance. 

"You have come at last," Pandora greets, emerging from the shadows. 

Abbie is shocked to hear herself hiss as the Hidden One appears behind her, but they remain on the periphery, watching them, observing. 

"She has needed you so," Pandora coos. "She thrashes with it, it has outgrown her---all of the incredible force she exerts seems to funnel back into it--she can't use the power faster than it recharges within her--pray, tell me you have come to ease your sisters burden."

"I've come to rescue her," she rasps, a voice she no longer recognizes as her own. She wonders if she will have her own voice again. Maybe she is meant to take Jenny's place. 

"Rescue" Pandora laughs softly. "Oh Abbie, come." and she holds her arms out wide, beckoning. "Come, my dear, dear, witness. No, no you cannot be any more rid of this power than she can stand it. It is yours to share now. I shall teach you how to wield it. Come, Abbie." 

"Why her," She asks, "Why me."

"Oh dear." the goddess clucks turning, "Beloved, she asks why. Because, Witness, the love you carry for your comrade---that love which does not feed you as you desire, in all its righteous thankless duty--demands you be selfless, that you give and give again, to save the world. But the love between sisters---this bond that cuts deep when severed, which bolsters when fortified, why, it is built on your blood," she exclaims. "Built on your own lineage and the bittersweetness of your past, this love between you two, of being alone in the world and having only each other---it will demand you save each other, before all else. World be damned." She smiles, showing her pointed teeth, and her eyes flash to the slitted yellow of a snake. "It's the most beautiful love of all." 

Abbie absorbs this information but does not dispute it. She is here, isn't she, she had let the runes power over run her to do exactly that, save Jenny. 

And now she seems to have walked into a trap. 

But Jenny is here, breathing, alive---for how long now she worries but the cold hearted nature of the rune prevents her from feeling too deep. It has gifted her a sort of numbness. It fed on enough pain earlier and has no desire for more just yet, it is sated, coursing through her limbs and twined all over her skin. 

"Take her hand," Pandora instructs. "Bridge the gap of your many shared sorrows."

The Hidden One stands in silence, taking it in. 

Abbie reaches for her sisters hand, lets her eyes close, and feels fire.  
*********************

There's an explosion in the cave. 

It rocks Sleepy Hollow. 

It bubbles and blows out, scorching all around the perimeters of the lair. 

Crane and Sophie rummaging around in the archives feel it, it throws Sophie to the ground, narrowly rolling out of the way of a disturbed book case. 

But Crane feels it like a flaming iron fist being thrust into his chest, a blaze that steals his breath and takes him choking to his knees, breathing smoke, eyes blown wide. "Oh no," he pants, feeling his chest, searching for the smoking brand of the rune but finds himself healed, the ghostly voice silent. "No, no," coughing and spluttering, he hits the floor. 

******************

"What the Hell---" Danny screams as the trees surrounding are obliterated into ash, he ducks down low to the ground and Joe is not far from him, but there are bodies. 

Agents who didn't get down fast enough, quickly withering and dissipating away into a dark curling mist, and just as swiftly being carried away on a suspiciously clearing wind. 

A new sound, bubbling, warm, velvet, vaguely familiar begins to chorus around them. It makes his hair stand on end. 

Joe's gut clenches, for another sound joins, and another. 

A cruel, melodious, damning and dangerous siren song, it lures you in even knowing the inherent danger. It calls to him because he knows it, knows the voices that are chiming in this destruction. 

As the smoke begins to clear there are three figures. Dancing white and blazing red and the regal robes of the Goddess, the darkened shadow of the Hidden One behind, arms thrown to the sky in triumph. 

Two pairs of white eyes gaze out at him. 

Eyes of one he has kissed. One he has betrayed. One he has envied. One he has taken to bed. 

He feels his heart rend in two, and at the moment he's not convinced it's not a reality. Anything is possible.

After all, there is Jenny and Abbie, standing with Pandora and the Hidden One.

And they are laughing. 

And then,

They are gone.


	17. Chapter 17

Pandora brushes their hair. 

Hers, then Jenny's. She takes care in applying scented oils and detangling, brushing, twisting and braiding them, humming something tuneless and eerie but with affection. The Hidden One paces, as he is wont to do. He toils endlessly here, examining symbols and hieroglyphs in the walls. Something about a power. At one point Jenny had regained enough of her senses to snap, "You are a God, don't you have enough?" 

He'd moved as if to strike her for her insolence but Pandora had held a protective hand over Jenny's head, cooing, "It is bad form, Beloved, after she has served us so well, to lay hands on her" The goddess delights in Jenny's smart mouth and in Abbie's steadiness. 

There is an upside to what she did, in offering to share the power of the Eye. It has lured Jenny out of the frightening power dominated stupor she had been in before. When she looks at her sister Jenny's eyes are clearer, her tongue sharper, and it occurs to her that she might be of a mind to rebel, if they ever had a moment alone. 

But the thought never lasts, though, the Catacombs are riddled with ancient magic that hum constantly in her ear. She has fleeting moments in which she thinks to bring up Joe---but the rune slaps the idea away, quite handily. So the sisters stay in perpetual day with the Goddess of the cursed box and the God, tenderly taken care of by Pandora while he glares at them out the corner of his eye. 

He likes their power but he does not like them. It was made clear to Abbie even when they first arrived that while his strength has improved, he has limits still. Less power than his wife, conceivably, less than her and Jenny. Or at the very least, less than the three women and their power combined. 

He is outnumbered, and it is an unspoken fact, though she knows it chafes him. Abbie has caught him many times passing an assessing gaze over their heads, as if deciding which one is likely to give him the most trouble. But some part of this power makes her mild, too, as it has done to Jenny. The strength of the eye still has a tie to him, and that reigns them in to a tenuous obedience.

It does not help that Pandora is motherly to them, this might be the more dangerous thing, her tenderness---it makes the Mills women small like children. Protected and cared after. It certainly makes them like her better. 

"What good, are they," he erupts suddenly. Pandora continues to plait Jenny's hair, Abbie, hair already done and adorned with a white flower---wherever did they find greenery here she cannot be bothered to ask---and marvelling at her white rune skin is playing a solitary game of chess. "How do they serve me unless I have all the power of the eye? TELL ME Pandora" he growls. 

Never breaking stride she replies coolly. "Do you forget that one is a Witness, Beloved? Already the point should be clear to you. There can be no one to come against you with her at our side. Her partner would never do her harm, he loves her so."

Abbie drops the rock chess piece she is holding and glances over her shoulder at Pandora who gives her a small slow smile. She is unsure if she is oblivious or being deliberately pointed. 

"But how, Beloved, does this restore me to my power"

"There's a spell in these walls, somewhere, written in your tongue," she emphasizes, and his nostrils flare. It's a jab at him, Abbie realizes. Perhaps he has forgotten the language, or perhaps, again, is he lacking all of the strength that it takes to absorb the needed information. "Find it, and it will fill the box to over flowing with all of the wickedness you could want, and they will fuel you." Abbie watches as the Hidden One's brow furrows. 

He needs her but he refuses to acknowledge it, certainly not in front of them. 

"I have faith in you," she assures him, and the tone is decidedly condescending. Jenny releases an unhinged sort of snicker and Pandora smacks her playfully. "Oh you wicked girl, sssh!" her gaze lands on Abbie and she beckons her closer. Intrigued, Abbie goes, keeping an eye on the God as he paces more and mutters in increasingly aggravated tones. "You are both so strong," she says fondly. "So loyal, so devoted. You could have the world kneel to you." she pauses, also watching her husband. "Listen well. Men are greedy. They take and take and watch for you to lift them when they have fallen. They choose you and leave you and betray, you....." her mouth curls into a smile and her eyes slit. "He made me all that I am, when I first set him free. But he grudges me now for it. Dismayed that I will not diminish myself for him. He will rule us all, no matter our might if he succeeds." she lowers voice and leans in close to them. "You must solve it yourselves, I will distract him today, and you must learnt the walls, find the pieces," she sits back, tucks another white flower in Jenny's hair and begins to rise from the floor, straightening out her dress and robes. "It could all be yours," she continues quietly and she locks eyes with Abbie. "All yours for the taking." 

Dutifully they both nod, watching as Pandora trails a hand along his arm, winking and smiling at him before he makes a primal sound, and with a hand to her back, they begin to meander down another corridor, their voices vanishing as they go. 

"All ours," Jenny echoes vacantly. "That would be a treat, considering I have so little of my own, anymore. Isn't that right Abbie?" and she cocks her head to the side. Her skin pulses red and Abbie's own runes shift with white light. "Joe, isn't my own, anymore, is he?"


	18. Chapter 18

"Jenny,"

"Is he." Jenny counters, voice hard edged, but in a way that speaks of a stubborn power rather than hurt. 

"I....I don't know. It's been hard without you, and the night you branded me,"

Jenny's crackling red skin flushes deeper. "He sought you." she turns her gaze away. 

"Why did you do it." Abbie asks. "Was, was this really your way of calling me to you?"

"I am not wholly myself, I'm sure you've noticed," Jenny snarls. "What the eye chooses.....it burrows inside and twists you. Twisted me. I wanted my sister back. And it made me conjure that thing, and now you're here." 

"I came to bring you home."

Jenny throws back her head and laughs, a dark crackling thing that makes Abbie's dim senses rankle beneath her skin. "You're not fit for home, anymore Abbie. Now what you've become now, not what I am. It was never my intention, but it seems there's always been two sides to the story, to your future. Pandora has been kind enough to show me,"

"Pandora speaks in riddles and lies----"

"She has nurtured me, like a mother," she intones.

"She is not, your mother, Jenny, she cannot---"

"Of course not." her sister snaps. "But she is just a woman who wants power, at the end of the day. Who wants to wield and show the world all of its wrongs for the devastation it visits upon the earth and women alike. She showed me, that we could be the purge, Abbie."

Abbie's runes light up at her words and her visions fills with the glorious fury of hellfire, burning, burning, screaming, scorching the earth. Decimation. A fresh start. "It's the eye talking to you Jenny, you can't want this---"

"I can, I could," she screws up her mouth and rakes her fingers through the dirt on the ground. "I do. It's your destiny that's two fold. It's you, who has the choice. Save the world as a soldier. Or save it as a ruler."

"Rule---"

"She wants nothing to do with him," Jenny's eyes glint. "You've seen him, hungry for power. He'd kill us all if he could figure out these runes on his own. But we're not going to let him. We're going to defeat him Abbie, by taking that power, for ourselves."

"And split it with Pandora," Abbie asks dubiously. Jenny shrugs. 

"Maybe if we unleash the power I can be clear headed enough to think morally about things. Right now there's a war waging in my head."

Abbie shudders, knowing the feeling. The rune chitter chatters in the back of her mind, nattering ancient magic and prophecy and things that hurt. "Jenny about Joe---"

Jenny waves a hand dismissively in the air. "I am not sure whether or not you would have gotten together or not without my curse afflicting you. But it brought you together. And the Rune has brought you to me, my sister, to claim something great and terrible together. This power has been burning through my emotional sensors....I wish it hurt me but it doesn't. Not yet. Figure out these glyphs with me. Rob the hidden one."

The way her mind churns with excitement at the prospect of power makes a forgotten corner of Abbie nauseas. "And Pandora---"

"Don't tax me. One step at a time."

*************************

Danny, Crane, Joe and Sophie wander through the cave that the explosion came from, dumbfounded. Crane running his hand along walls, hunting and searching. "Explain this to me again, Foster." Danny grunts as he casts his flashlight around. 

Sophie huffs. "You're not gonna like the explanation he gave me."

"I've got a field of agents turned to ash." Danny snaps. "I'll take something to explain that."

***********************

"The box." Abbie murmurs. "She needs to deploy  a sacrifice into the box." 

"Sacrifice." Jenny replies, glancing over her shoulder. Her brows knit and her writhing red skin crackles with flame. "There's a chamber here, I'm going to go, investigate." 

Abbie nods curtly, continuing to scan the walls. Without the hidden one looming over them, her brain seems clearer and more like her self, though the runes still shift and dance on her skin. She's unsure what good they really are besides a horrible ability to inflict pain on others. She is studying the wall when she hears a voice. Quiet and whispery. She turns slowly and sees him. 

*******************

The projection had been Crane's idea. 

Sending Joe, had not been. 

But when everything was explained, Sophie and Danny, although still doubtful and fully skeptic, had been inclined to believe that whatever new connection she had formed with Joe---though this too had grated on Danny to admit---would be more effective, than the hurting chasm of things that still lay between her and Crane. 

******************

Joe's never seen anything like it and it frightens him that instead of repulsion or fear, he feels a very distinct pull. All of the glowing white of her designs and the flash glint spark in her eyes, makes her enchanting, powerful, dangerous and still, maybe because his memory is still vivid, he recalls the softness of her gaze when she was beneath him. The gentleness of her when she stroked his arms, arching up against him.

"Abbie?"

She blinks slowly. In her mind, in her skin, she can feel the defensive heating flare of the rune that wants nothing to do with healing. That wants to keep her a vengeful monster, but perhaps because it's been caught off guard, it's no match for when Joe goes striding toward her, only for his arms to pass through. 

"How," she asks. 

"We found a way."

She doesn't need him to clarify the 'we'. 

"Are you....what have you...."

"What don't you like the new look?" she teases darkly. 

"I feel like a traitor to humanity for saying yes."

"And why's that?"

"Because whatever you've become," Joe swallows. "It....it can't possibly be good."

"Jenny is here," Abbie says. "She's in there, but she's not the same."

"Like you." Joe's eyes water. "I don't know what I did that the universe sees fit I should lose you both---"

"You haven't lost us, Joe."

"Then what, tell me. She's got hidden one power in her, and whatever the hell has happened to you. How do we get you back."

Abbie meets his gaze and turns away. "Maybe you don't Joe."

Her words shock him. His form begins to waver. "What?"

"Maybe you don't get us back." 

And she walks through him, in search of her sister. 

He gasps and vanishes.

******************

Joe wakes up to three pairs of eyes scrutinizing him. 

"Well, Master Corbin? did you see her?"

Joe blinks hard. "I.....I think we've lost them, Crane. We've lost them both." 


	19. Chapter 19

"Crane I swear you have one more try at putting your hands on me" Joe snaps, dodging out of the way of Crane's furiously grasping hands. In disbelief Crane had demanded Joe repeat his findings from the trip, three times, each time his voice creeping higher as he inched closer and closer and his hands were lancing for Joe's throat. 

"You coward!" Crane accuses. "You despicable---"

"How am _I_ coward" Joe shoots back, bouncing to his feet and suddenly him and Crane are standing toe to toe, nose to nose with Danny and Sophie catching on too late they're about to come to blows. Joe gets in the first shove and Crane staggers backwards into Danny, roaring his outrage. 

"Because your one duty was to bring her home and you failed!"

"You didn't exactly provide a manual on how an astral projection could carry a woman out of a mystical realm on a **_spirit tether!_** " Joe blasts, lunging towards him again, Sophie tugging backwards. 

Crane breaks free of Danny's hold and lunges, boxing Joe's ear. "I'd have found a way, being her fellow witness" 

"It's amazing the amount of weight that carries for you when its convenient!" A feral growl tears up out of him before he throws his one punch, for a minute feeling terror course through him at the strength loaded in his swing.  It sends Crane flying across the archives, slamming and slumping into a bookshelf. 

Groaning but heated Crane gets to his feet easily. " Yes let the ill mannered beast you are join the fun," he hisses and is quicker than anyone expects renewing his attack on Joe. The two of them grapple with Danny and Sophie trying and failing to keep them apart. 

"Stop it!" Sophie yells. "Stop!"

Joe pitches away first, heaving, feeling much too warm. Sweat beads on his brow and his chest heaves as he shakes out his hands. "The wendigo," he mutters, looking down at himself. It can't be, but he's sure the surge of power he'd felt had been tinged the beasts strength. He wills it not to be so. It's gotta be adrenaline, he thinks, but his doubts and fears win out as her continues muttering in a tempered panic, "No, no, this is supposed to be gone, cured."

"Should be, but maybe it's just natural part of your animal instincts, Master Corbin," he bites out, smoothing back his hair and straightening his rumpled clothes. 

"This isn't funny Crane," Joe starts.  "We all know how unpredictable the wendigo is, and joking that it might be coming back is----" 

"Nothing more than your ill temper, I'm sure." Crane counters. "Futile attempt to send you instead, of course you couldn't bring her back, why would it fall to you?" 

"Agent Reynolds," Joe instructs calmly. "Step aside. Because If this curse is going to come back on me and blind me with rage and bloodlust---I want  a clear shot at my target." 

Crane stands ramrod straight. "Another round?"

 Joe growls. "You know I'm baffled how we worked so long together and I'm only now getting the urge to sock you one," 

"GUYS" Sophie snaps. "Arguing with each other is not going to help your cause. In fact, the way you tell it, it was while you bickered that Abbie slipped by you, unnoticed so- GET IT TOGETHER." she barks. Taking heaving deep breaths Joe sits down heavily in the chair he abandoned, burying his head in his hands. Willing and hoping against all odds that it is just pent up energy making him feel the restless wild way he does right now. It takes a moment before a hand lands solidly on his shoulder and he stiffens. He looks up and meets Cranes eyes. 

"I would never wish the wendigo's return upon you, Master Corbin." Crane whispers, voice solemn and eyes stern. "It was cruel, and unfair for me to jest." Dropping his hand he sighs and leans against the spirit cabinet wall. "I am angry at myself that I seem to be no more useful in returning the Mills sisters to us, that I have failed so greatly our bond. And yes, that I was forced today to put trust in you, and to have it fail. This isn't supposed to be something in anyone else's hands but my own. It grieves me to find it otherwise."

"You guys gotta remember you're on the same team." Danny interjects and then frowns. "That's rich coming from me though isn't it.....I betrayed Abbie in the field." 

All three men hang there head a moment in silence. Contemplating their roles as cogs in this machine. How they have helped, how they have erred. How they have alienated Abbie and now unable to bring her home themselves. Sophie breaks the tense quiet next, swallowing. "There's a lot of amends that needs to be made. But let's....let's focus on getting Mills back first, there's got to----" The Archive door blusters open. 

* * *

 

Walking through Joe had left her feeling a chilled as she'd stalked the halls, calling for her sister. She found Jenny in a chamber glancing up at the inscriptions on a wall. "It calls for hope." she says with her back still turned as Abbie enters behind her. 

"Hope," 

Jenny shakes her head. "Suppose we could feed it the hidden one? His hope for power?" she grins wickedly and Abbie is dismayed to feel herself returning the smile. 

"That would solve one of our problems----"

There's a crash of thunder, shrieking yells followed by something smashing and another scream. 

"It should have been, you," Pandora cuts in behind them, face flushed, her hair in sticky wisps against her skin. A smoking gash cuts across her visage and her slitted eyes flicker wildly.The sisters don't flinch as they glance over their shoulder and see the goddess there. She laughs mirthlessly.  "The hope, if I'm being honest, Abbie, you were to be the boxes companion. But I can't bare to part with you now, seeing how well you've grown into your power, and so quickly"  she exclaims softly, "But come, we must flee." 

Without warning she swoops in, grasping their hands and tugging them down a hall. The sisters follow easily but dart wary glances at one another. When they reach back into the main room they wrench away and demand answers. 

"We must go," Pandora insists. "He lay with me and then tried to sap my strength. I fought him, but he will wake, and when he does, he will be angry. Whether or not we outnumber, he is still a god, and he will not be pleased. Come, we go." 

She wraps an arm firmly, protectively around each set of their shoulders and wind rattles in their ears. 

* * *

 

Sophie's eyes widen and she trips backwards, reaching for her gun. 

"Do not bother, call them off, Witness. I have something of yours." Pandora coos, stepping aside to present Abbie and Jenny standing stoically together, magic riddled glorious beacons of power. Abbie's eyes flicker a moment with myriad emotions across each face, landing lastly with tender conflict on Joe. Jenny beside registers recognition, but barely moved beyond that. 

"Pandora," Crane calls, striding forward. "What is the meaning of this, release them, this instant."

The goddess throws back her head and cackles wildly. A reckless terrible song that seems to call up its own wind. The air hums with the magic of these three women and Joe shifts uncomfortably, feeling an all too familiar, alarming pull. 

"What has been done cannot be merely taken back and undone. But that is not the matter for which we gather, Witness. I have need of your help. My beloved grows greedy."

"Our help." Danny repeats skeptically. "I just met you but you levelled half my agents today....forgive me if I'm not feeling helpful lady." 

Pandora marches forward, billowing cloak, dishevelled. A wild, unpredictable, being made of magic and the forbidden and flings her arm out towards him. A beam of power lances out towards his, wrapping around his throat and lifting him high of the ground. He struggles and kicks, fighting for air. "You, mortal, are not one of whom I requested assistance" she hisses gleefully. Her features that of a snake and to everyone's horror her jaw unhinges, revealing pointed, curved fangs. " It would trifle me none to turn you into a feast for myself and my daughters," 

It takes a moment for the words to register, that Pandora means Abbie and Jenny. 

Crane looks on, mortified. "Drop him Pandora---"

"You will help me" she commands in a rasp that slithers on their skin. Kicking in the air, Danny begins to turn blue. 

"Yes!" Crane shouts, panicking. Joe joins in with assurances. 

"Yes, Pandora, we'll help you!" 

She continues to hold Danny a moment before she drops him abruptly, the others scramble to catch him and Abbie's own limbs tug to go forward but the rune combined with the powers she shared with Jenny root her to the spot. And it seems clear where Jenny's loyalty has turned. Whether of her own will or a side effect of being with them so long, is unclear. But Jenny is not moved to Danny's aid, and Abbie's will doesn't seem strong enough. 

She feels the rune coiling tighter within her now, pressing and reaching for her mind where it had left it alone before. Her heart and the raging emotions within it had quieted, but complete control seems to be what it seeks now. She finds herself fighting against it, hard. But who can know how long she can hold out. 

Pandora's face reassembles itself and she looks on all of them with glittering black eyes. "My beloved has lost his mind." she says, calmly, cool. "He seeks to destroy me and mine, and I have laboured too long, and they have known too much pain to go quietly into the wake of his destruction."

"And how do you suppose we help you." Sophie interrupts and halts when the goddess eyes sweep over her. 

"What a pretty thing you are." she says. "You know I am a firm believer in the more the merrier," she grins and Sophie backs up hard into Danny regaining his footing. "Don't be surprised. I will want to see my daughters matched." Pandora coos. "And since the one has so thoroughly betrayed the other in stealing her paramour---" she sneers, a horrible expression that Joe feels levelled his way and down to his toes. "I should see, dear Jennifer, matched. Don't you find her beautiful mortal?" she taunts Sophie, gliding towards her and Danny grips her arms, yanking her away from the goddess who laughs again. 

"Pandora," Crane yells. "We've no time for matchmaking---"

Her face sobers. "You are right. I want to see my husband dead. And you will help me." 

She produces the box and holds it aloft, her teeth bared in a wicked smile. "It needs a sacrifice for the power source." She nods back at Abbie and Jenny, held still looking on at the door. Abbie struggles for mobility but Jenny has a grip on her hand, anchoring her in place. Pandora turns back to the waiting group. "It needs, a sacrifice," she repeats, and levels her gaze with each one of them present in the room, and then lingers on Joe and Crane. Her voice is a musical, damning dirge for the dead when she purrs. 

"Which one of you will go?" 


	20. Chapter 20

A tightened grip on Abbie's hand is the only indication she has that Jenny's been affected by Pandora's words. For a flickering second, gone is the power vessel, void of emotion. A human surfaces in her sisters gaze, shock, a hot spike of worry and Abbie seizes it. She grips Jenny's hand back, hard, latches onto the fleeting, dodging tendrils of panic, trying to be squashed down beneath the power of the Eye and because part of the magic in her Rune skin is seeking out doubts and fears and pain to make it stronger, it's quick at finding this glimmer of humanity and taking a fierce hold of it. She squeezes Jenny's hand so hard so expects one of them to cry out with the force of it but instead Jenny turns her head stiffly towards her, eyes bright, clear.

"We can't" she whispers, quiet, eyes growing wider in alarm, skin pulsing red. Abbie feels a small triumph in the Runes work, it prods and forces past Jenny's own power---a task it takes on with excitement to twine around all of the possible pain that lurks within her, to unearth any and all of Jenny's dulled sorrows, pulling them, dredging them up relentlessly to the surface and Abbie's power grows instead. It's a steady, measured, tempered battle within herself, because the Rune so longs to make sure she cannot feel, only feed, but she turns her mind toward commanding, trying to win out over any urge to destroy and waken to heal. "We can't," she gasps again, a little louder, eyes flickering to and fro. 

"I thought you said you could," That's the rune talking in Abbie now. Taunting. "I thought you said you _wanted_ this,"

"Power yes"

"And you think the means to achieve it is a clean one" Irritation, anger, lights through her. This has been Jenny from the start. Wanting answers and not caring how she got them. Wanting to win and not caring how. It's how she got saddled with the eye. How she found herself overtaken by it and playing dutiful servant to the destructive goddess and god. It's how in her power drunk state she had branded Abbie to drive her to her side. Wanting only what, her sister, or company in her misery now, is unclear, but addle minded in the thrall of the Eye's magic, had thought nothing of the consequences, the means by which she would achieve it. Her grip goes from strong to cruel in a second and a tick in Jenny's jaw is her well disguised wince. "You think nothing through," Abbie hisses, keeping her voice low, eyes straight ahead while Pandora makes her entreatments.

The goddesses voice is unfairly melodious and chilling at once. She paints for all them all of the ways the Hidden One will destroy humanity if they don't ruin him first. Illustrates how Abbie and Jenny will be shredded, torn like fine ribbon by his ravenous hunger for power if they will not help. She asks them, would they sacrifice their own instead, The Mills Sisters, yes even possessed, changed as they are,  why, no, she wouldn't blame them. Who could love them as they are now. 

"Abominations, to humanity." She declares smoothly. "Unholy, otherworldly, which one of you could possibly love them enough to spare they who defy nature. Indeed," she sneers. "They who could command you bow at their feet. Which one of you would save them and all of the unpredictable power and might they may visit vengefully upon you, to damn the Hidden One who would scorch the earth and all that lies in it, score humanity into ash and tramp upon their remains, laughing his triumph. And any who survived, his loyal slave. One for him to toy with." she grins wickedly again at Sophie. "One, for a pet," and snaps her teeth playfully at Joe who visibly shudders at the hint of his wendigo nature. "Perhaps one, to entertain, him, and one to serve." she looks Crane up and down, from head to toe. "I do not think you have been humbled, properly, Witness. I think my husband would enjoy seeing you brought low."

Danny, Crane, Sophie and Joe exchange wary glances with one another, wrestling and struggling to think. There must be another way, there's got to. 

"We can't," Jenny hisses again, voice pitched higher. 

"No." Abbie answers, struggling. She's feeling the after affect of the Rune feeding now. It's giving her a power surge that's starting to cloud her mind. Makes it hard to focus. Her grip slackens and Jenny wrenches free, glaring heatedly at her but seemingly awake. Still humming and glowing with power, but at least awake. "There must be a loophole, but how----"

"It needs, Hope!" Pandora cries joyously again. "That is what the world needs! To survive, to over turn, to thrive against all odds, hope! Which one of you, is the hope for a new world?" her eyes slit. "If not for the world, than for my daughters and I to see another dawn. Who will be my hope for the future, with them gone? Who will be the redeeming hope for Jennifer? And who will be the hope, for Abigail? My dear, always second, never first, Abigail. Which of you men," she says pointedly. "Which of you will atone for the ways you have wronged herl, and show her now, your valour. Which of you men, will choose dear, Abbie" she teases. "and save she who has your whole heart?"

A step forward and Abbie's heart lurches.

The same heart so heavily wrapped up and ensconced in malevolent Rune magic  tugs free of the bonds and her engraved skin gutters to clear smooth brown before it slams back in again, almost forceful but her heart fights it, thrashes and the fog in her mind clears rapidly. She springs forward but is thrown back by Pandora, gusting a harsh wind toward Abbie and Jenny. "Let him come, Abigail. Let yourself be chosen for once. Let yourself be worthy, losing it all for."

Joe stands tall, shoulders back and Abbie scrabbles to her feet, beating against the barrier Pandora has erected before her and Jenny. Jenny stands in shock, watching as Joe strides forward, willing to commend himself into the box, at mention of Abbie. He chooses her. 

Jenny's revived clarity gifts her the ability to feel hurt, now. Pain. Hurt for her own rejection, from Joe's heart. Hurt, for the mortified look on Crane's face, wrestling to break forward, but Pandora quickly blocked them behind another barrier the minute Joe came forward. And pain for Abbie, who found something she possibly she should not have ever had, with Joe---and finds herself facing the prospect of losing it. When surely there are those more deserving of paying the price. 

"Joe" Abbie screams, clawing for him. "Joe, No, don't" 

Pandora whirls around angrily with a shriek. "Quiet!" she screams. "For once you are first! Are you not glad! For once, Abbie, you are above all others, even ones own life. Revel in this! He comes willingly, out of his own care---"

"More than care," Joe interrupts steadily.

Pandora pauses, mouth open before closing it and giving Joe a sly glance. She presses a hand to her heart. "The dear lamb." she smiles. "More than care, Abbie, did you hear that, he _more_ than cares for you"

"Joe!" Abbie cries out again, fighting to break through Pandora's wall of power, fighting against the Runes blinking in and out. 

The box floats gaily in Pandora's hands as she cracks the cover. "Closer," she coaxes him. "Closer."

"Joe!" 

There is muffled yelling and struggling on one side, trying to stop Joe. Crane beats and rages even as the barrier scalds his hands. "Not you Master Corbin, I! It is I!"

"You hesitated. As always." Pandora sneers. "He is the better of you, Witness. Admit it.Come closer, sweet, come." 

Jenny joins in the assault on the forcefield with Abbie. Whether or not she aches for Joe's turn of heart, he is family. He belongs here with them, not.

Abbie shrieks in agony. 

Joe's gaze flickers to her, writhing behind the wall of power as she grapples with her traitorous heart fighting back against the nature of the Rune. "Abbie," he calls. "Abbie," he looks to Pandora. "Please, let me help her," He begs. "I can't leave her like this"

Impatiently Pandora lets the wall fall but Abbie is curled on the ground, warring with the magic trying now once more its last aggressive take over. For this moment everyone is held captive in silence as he goes forward and draws Abbie up into his arms. She clutches desperately at him even as she convulses. "Joe," She whispers, feverish. "Please Joe, don't,"

He ignores her, holding her tight instead and placing soft kisses on her cheek. She inhales sharply as the Runes recede with a hiss, driven away by his care. But she still feels the magic lingering there, simmering at the ready. Her cheeks are wet. 

"You don't have to do---this," 

Caressing her face Joe leans in, touching his lips on hers. "Jenny, then you, have paid a price, it's my turn, Abbie. It's  okay," 

Disgust comes first, sharp revulsion, before the futility of it settles on Crane. Everything is laid bare in this moment for them all to see. The one thing neither Abbie nor Joe will name. Certainly, the one thing they never saw coming. Even Pandora looks on with marked interest, her brow pinching in a way that even might suggest pity. 

"It's not okay, Joe." Jenny says. "Pandora, there must be something else, anything-----"

The room quakes roars with the voice of the Hidden One. Rolling like great and terrible thunder. 

_**PANDORAAAAAA** _

The goddess blanches. "He's here."

Shutting his eyes Joe kisses Abbie one last time before he stretches for the box. 

For the moment more human than Rune Abbie staggers to her feet and lunges for him. 

The cries and yells come from all directions then. A cacophony of protest. Several voices, a chorus of objection and myriad tones of desperation. 

" _ **ABBIE, NO"**_

* * *

 

A burst of light. 

Wild shrieking of wind.

A bellowing, terrifying roar. 

Shelves tumbles and chunks of ceiling fall and the god is there before them, flaming eyes and death seeking hands. 

The box shakes and rattles.

Lightening.

Yells.

Crackle red sparks of power---a mind tugged back into obedience. 

A hand laid on her crown as he draws in and another hand extended for his betraying wife throwing her own attacks at him that seem to fall short.

Curling white smoke, mist.

A beast leaps forward. 

On his back, a woman of white magic. 

She draws on all of the fear that permeates the room, even that of the goddess, and gripping the mane of the beast that charges forward hurls it in blast after blast at the hidden one.

It scalds him.

Smokes his skin. Burrows into him with all of the mortal woes in the room. Even those of his wife. 

Wheedles in, seeking his own doubts and horrors. 

Latent hurt, of his first betrayal. 

He howls with it, working fast and relentless through him.

And the woman throws punch after punch, and the wendigo lunges, jaw open, and sinks into the blasphemous flesh of this false god. 

The screaming and terror is deafening. 

He keeps snapping at him, tearing the god asunder. 

The tether breaks on the Eye possessed one and joining hands with she clothed in runes of white, turn their hell born gift on him. 

He explodes into tatters. 

Blown apart, into smithereens. 

Before them the goddess quakes as the sisters turn on her and pull her magic. She is unwilling at first but the wendigos snapping jaws makes her generous. 

The womens hands linked, and one resting affectionately on the head of the beast, stride back towards the box.

They are beasts. They are cursed. They are wreathed in powers that are malicious and dark. 

But they are human origin. With hearts that beat, stubbornly, furiously still. That choose each other, forgive one another. That love. 

That reject the wicked, to be good. 

 _That_ , is hope.

Where there is love, they have hope in abundance. 

It is well enough for the box. It draws away their afflictions, gladly, drinking deep of their magic, and explodes, destroying itself and all the wicked that lay within it. 

* * *

 

When they rise from the debris, Abbie clutches for Jenny's hand, and Joe's. Each of them blinking awake on the other side of her. In a far corner, a diminished brunette woman sits up in a daze. Lost. "Where am I?" she asks, confused. 

Abbie looks down at herself, then Jenny, who greets her with a trademark, wolfish grin. "My God I'm sorry I've always been such a fool, Abbie. I'm sorry I did that to you." and throws her arms around her sister. Abbie grips her back, tight. The others rush forward cheering in disbelief. Beside her Joe rises and she grasps his arms and touches his face. 

"Don't ever do that to me again," she breathes, eyes closed as she presses her forehead to his. "So help me Joe---"

He grips back and tilts his head to kiss her, murmuring softly against her lips. "I'm not going anywhere," arms curling tight around her. 

They did it.

They're back, all three of them. Purged. 

They won.

And Abbie has Joe. And he, has her. 

Abbie embraces him, inhaling deeply his scent. "I want you."

He chuckles. "Abbie, you can _have_ me." 

 


	21. Chapter 21

After, taking in the disarray of the archives, they decide they are far too tired and worn to consider righting the mess and aftermath. They need rest, all of them. 

For Danny, new to the strange and other worldly and having witnessed things he never should have and frankly finds himself deeply wishing he could scrub it from his brain---he, needs a stiff drink. 

Pandora, tattered and gone meek and small now stripped of her power looks skittishly at them when they approach her. She flinches when Abbie and Jenny extend their hands. 

"Kill me and be done," she rasps, wretched. "Kill me and let my story end."

The sisters exchange looks but stubbornly offer to help her to her feet. Shakily, she grasps them and rises. She appears smaller, without magic. Pale. There is still a sort of edge to her features, and in the dark pools of her eyes, a glint that could tend toward malicious had she the power to back it up. But at present, in essence, she is glaringly human. She seems to be having great difficulty reconciling the fact. 

"You wanted family," Abbie says staunchly. "Well, you've got one now, Pandora. If you want it."

The former goddess looks up at her in disbelief. "After all I did to you?" she queries, all the guile gone from her voice. "All of the torment and ways I strove---"

"Now's not the time to remind me when I'm feeling generous," Abbie cuts in, with a raised brow to make her point.

Pandora begins to blink rapidly with what Abbie quickly recognizes to be tears. And once she begins the woman seems unable to stop. She leans heavily on Abbie, even though her frame is so small by comparison, and Jenny cringes to throw her arm around her defeated shaking shoulders. 

No one can know really what makes Pandora cry. With such feeling, as if she had been damning in all of these emotions for eons. They guess perhaps gratefulness to be spared. Might even be that she is lamenting all the power and the bright future she had envisioned for herself as a queen. And it might be that she is a human confronted with kindness that she hasn't known for some time, and she is ill equipped to deal with it. 

Crane meets Abbie's eyes as she struggles with the woman and he moves to help but Joe is there first. His fists clench, watching the look that passes between the two, warm, and heated, with a little mirth there too. The look of two who are deeply bonded, beyond their understanding can allow. A pair that has been through the fire and emerged victorious together. 

It's a look that decrees, they have one another, hell or high water. 

He feels a pang and his eyes sting, mourning, regretful. He recognizes it so completely, as a look that he once shared with his Leftenant. Now that gaze is for Joe. Joe, who easily shifts Abbie out from under the burden of Pandora's weight and grasps Abbie's hand in her own as they make their way out of the wreckage, walking past him. He falls into step behind. Sophie to his left. Danny to his right, watching the unusual foursome, Two Mills, a Corbin, and a goddess fallen from grace to simple basic mortality, leaning on another, lending support. 

A new unit. A fresh start. 

This is the new order now, Crane tells himself, pulling the archive doors closed behind them as they leave. 

* * *

 

 

It's a bizarre thing for Abbie, to find herself bring Pandora into her house. To be wearily trudging to the linen closet for pillows and blankets for her. They're all staying in the house tonight. That came as a direct order from Joe when Jenny, Sophie and Danny had started to turn away on the front steps. 

"We've all been through a hell of a day, and I don't think any of us should be alone tonight."

Crane had cleared his throat and extended a hand invitingly inside the house. "For once, Master Corbin, I quite agree," he'd said. 

Too weary to argue, and secretly relieved to ride out the aftermath of the battle, Danny unceremoniously crashing on the couch, and cringing away when Pandora falls somewhere in  the vicinity, arm laden with pillow and blanket. Sophie takes the arm chair. Jenny scratches nervously at her skin, feeling still like the betrayer for her time in the Eye's thrall until Crane graciously concedes his room. She protests but he won't hear it. He is more at peace being able to keep an eye on Pandora downstairs anyway, even if she is now mortal and no more. 

In the midst of this, no one seems to notice when Abbie and Joe slip upstairs, her leading the way, taking him by the hand.

* * *

 

The door closes softly, quietly behind them before Joe pushes her against it, his hands going carefully into her hair and his eyes boring into her. Searching. "You okay in there?" Some part of him, fails to believe she's cured. 

His open care makes her heart race and she feels tears glitter in her eyes. She nods and grips his shirt, tugging him closer. "I'm good, Joe. You?"

Abbie's eyes close as his lips touch her forehead, reverently lingering there. His hands drop from her hair and go around shoulder and waist as her own wrap around his back. He just holds her. Clutching, close, breathing together. 

"I thought I'd lost you." he says at last. "When....when I saw you there in that place and you said maybe you don't come back.....Abbie I felt that in places, deep down, in places, that I didn't know I could  _feel_." Her eyes close, listening to his voice, warm, raw, earnest. "Like a  _pit_ inside me, I was already in free fall within myself---"

"Why did you, why would you offer to go?" She asks. Because there's time now, for questions. Double check, to make sure. The adrenaline has died down and there aren't lives at stake, the rampant emotions, while not calm, have reigned themselves, temporarily, and oh so tentatively back in. 

When Joe pulls back he meets her eyes and reaches to clasp one of her hands in his own. He glances down at it, marvelling at her smooth brown skin, clear, perfect, not a mark insight. Her slender fingers. The smallness of it. Dainty and strong in his own hand. He strokes her fingers, traces patterns on her palm. "I'm not Crane." he says, quiet and even. "I know, he feels, something for you Abbie, I know you're the Witnesses and---"

"I never thought about Crane when I was with you," Abbie whispers, confidential. "I'm not going to start now,"

Emboldened, he reaches for her other hand, locking them together he draws her close. "Whatever Crane feels for you....I was ready to give myself so you could live. Because....because, you, Abbie. You deserve to be first choice, first place. Better. A full life, a lived life, with everything you're capable of. I love everything that could be in store for you, in the future for you, even without me in it. I love that, almost as much as I love you."

He's said it. 

It's quick and fast. It's new it's frightening. But deep. The words fill her with fire and peace in one. She wants to tumble him over into the bed and never let go. She wants to be his. For him to be hers, and to have this. This. 

"Because I love you." he says, cracking the smallest smile, as if he's gone a little shy his eyes dart away and then back to her face. "I would have gone because Grace, Abigail, Mills.....Abbie...." he shrugs, helpless with the fact. "I'm in love with you." 

She feels so warm inside, feeling her mouth begin to tug into a smile. "Joe, I lo--"

"No hurry. Abbie." he says. "Because I saw you, when you thought you were going to lose me. I heard you when you were in my arms, asking me not to go, and that tells me enough. I know....I know it's hard for you to open up Abbie, so you don't owe me anything to say it back right now. I saw you felt. I feel it with you now." he kisses her, softly, gently and she moulds her body against him, freely, openly. This is no clandestine secret they need to keep anymore. This isn't a forbidden affair. It's theirs, honest and true. She wants Joe because she does, and there's no rune magic to fear, and no loneliness to chase away. She knows the sturdy stalwart heart of Joe Corbin. He's such a part of her past, the fabric of who she is, no matter how torn she has been in the years of her adult life, but here he is, weaving her back together and she does the same for him. 

They fit like puzzle pieces. Question, Answer. 

She moans softly when his tongue delves into her mouth and she reaches up to pull him down, harder until she leaps onto his frame, legs locking around his waist and he carries her, then deposits her on the bed. He surges over her, trailing kisses along her neck, grazing with his nose around her jaw up till he's at her mouth again, trading kisses and soft sighs as his hands skim under her top and his skin touches her sides. "Joe," she releases a shuddery breath, feeling need and desire begin to course through her when he pulls back and smiles. 

"Not yet," he winks, rubbing her arms. 

She laughs in disbelief. "What?"

He leans in, lips brushing her ear. "You've been through it. Let me take care of you tonight. Let me run you a bath."

Abbie interlocks her fingers with his. "Promise you'll join me." 

Another kiss. "Promise." 

 


	22. Chapter 22

Joe runs the water. 

Then helps Abbie undress. 

A slow, torturous exercise executed with soft lingering touches, and lips insisting to taste every bit of bare skin he reveals. He slides the straps of her bra delicately down her shoulders and runs his finger along the ridge of the cup, mouth still fierce on hers, before he undoes the clasp and she sighs with relief as he moves to discard it and then reaches up to touch her. " _Ohhhhhh"_ she moans as his thumbs brush across her nipples, fingers circling them until he pulls away and lowers his head, taking one in his mouth. Her breath is faint and shaky as she holds him there, arching her back and feeling one hand kneed the opposite breast while one ventures down to her backside over her jeans. She's on fire and yet he's taking so much careful time with her it could almost be cruel. He releases her at last to tend to the other breast and Abbie scratches her nails along his scalp. He hums approval of it and it sends a shot of fire through her, down to where she needs him most. When he withdraws it's to reclaim her lips again while he reaches for the button on her jeans. 

God Joe is slow.

She loves it.

He eases them down, inch by inch, squeezing her behind, pawing at her legs until he makes her sit on the ledge of the tub while he tugs them off her feet. And he starts from her toes, pecking each one, and working back upwards. He rubs and massages her legs as he works, until at the apex of her thighs and Abbie inhales sharply as she watches Joe press his nose against her, inhaling. 

Something about this time together seems more intimate and bare than any of the other times. More wanton, yet involved. There's a sort of shameless wanting in his actions tonight. Like he wants her to know he wants her and loves her, deeply in the most profound, but also in the most raw, primal way. Hooking his thumbs in her underwear he draws them down to her ankles and she kicks them off in a corner, then gently grasping her knees, pushes outward, spreading her legs apart. He kisses her thighs, pauses to suck a mark there, like a brand. 

But this mark she doesn't mind. This reminder of Joe being here with her, she likes. "I want one on my shoulder," she breathes. "And on my breast, I want to look in the mirror and remember." 

His beautiful eyes look up at her and he nods once. "I'm gonna need you to return the favour." he says, voice low with desire. 

"Tell me where you want them, and I will gladly oblige you," a teasing note creeps into her voice and they both share a smile. He's still grinning at her, his heart shining in his eyes when a finger slips inside her and she jolts. Her concentration on his face broken by his digit pumping slowly in and out.

"Yes, yes" she pants arching. 

Joe watches her, takes in how beautiful she is, keening for more of his touch before he adds another finger and leans in to introduce his tongue to the fray. 

She struggles and fails to contain her pants and cries as he brings her to the brink and she crashes over. She doesn't seem to care if anyone downstairs will have heard. Abbie glares at him, chest heaving. "Take off your shirt," she instructs, though her voice is still shaky. "And pants,  _now_ "

"Take them off me," he challenges. A predatory look enters her gaze before she springs on him, all but tearing his shirt off and Joe catches her fervour as he unbuckles his belt, drops the pants, boxers too and hisses when she grips him. Hard, hot. Ready and willing. He braces against the wall. "Jesus."

Abbie smirks, biting her bottom lip. "I'm gonna leave one, right here," she promises, giving him a light squeeze. His words choke off. All he can do is nod wordlessly. "And here," she continues, leaning in to kiss his chest, and tilts her head to swirl a tongue around his nipple. 

His hand wraps suddenly in her hair and he pulls her up to kiss her, open mouthed, greedy and passionate. Backing her up until she hits the tubs and nearly falls over, but his arms are around her, and he helps her to slide in before joining her. She turns over and wraps her arms and legs around him, his cock nestling near her entrance and she resumes the kiss. Matching him stroke for stroke. The water in the tub sloshes with their movements as his hands massage and grip her backside. Her breasts press against him and they battle with each other, who can kiss more neck, shoulder, lips. He catches her ear and she melts against him.  "I need you," she gasps. " _Please_ ," she begs. Abbie isn't accustomed to begging. But it feels good in this instant to need, so direly, completely. Knowing, that he won't disappoint her. Abbie can need Joe in countless many ways, and tell him that, she wants to tell him that, she wants this open honesty for him to know how strong and true her feelings run. That she trusts him to come through for her.

"I've got you, Abbie" he breathes. 

And slides in. 

They groan with the pleasure of it. She throws her head on his shoulder and runs her fingers through his hair, still, savouring this moment of being connected like this. They've done it before, but she's struck for perhaps the tenth time tonight by how different this coupling is. Deeper. More bare. Wild. Freeing. She growls against his throat. "You feel so good inside me,"

He releases a half strangled laugh. "Abbie, baby,"----the nickname makes her shiver with delight---" I....I need you to move. I  _need_ it. Badly." 

She purrs against his skin, swiping her tongue on his neck as she lifts herself up and sinks back down. She watches Joe throw his head back with the bliss of it. How he revels in her. His hands are all over her as she rides him, more water splashing in greater, louder quantities out of the tub. Abbie hears herself giggle as another wave crashes over the edge but then focuses on the journey with him. The angle is deep, perfect, right where she needs him. He matches her slow arduous pace before telling her they need to shift. 

His withdrawal makes her feel empty and cold, shocking her with the abandonment of it as she shifts so he back is against the and he positions on top of her and glides back in. Still he is taking all of his damn time, pausing at moments to kiss her breasts and whisper things about her beautiful skin and eyes. She writhes and preens with his lavish attention, chasing her peak only to be brought back down to tender touches before pushing her back up again. It's so indulgent Abbie worries he's spoiling her. He's so gentle and loving. 

"I'm not gonna break." she pants, offering a smile as she lifts her hips just slightly so he can hit right--- _there_. " _Ohhhh Joe._ "

"No but by the time I'm finished with you, you might," he warns seductively. 

"You wouldn't break me," Abbie barely gets the words out amidst another moan. He begins to increase his pace at last and it's so good. It's everything she needs. 

" _Abbie_ "

"Give it to me,"

The tub is almost empty for the stormy tempest they created in it. She bites down into his shoulder so she won't scream. 

" _God yes"_ he pants when she releases, and then goes harder, faster, unrelenting. 

* * *

 

After a moment of lying around downstairs in stupor someone's stomach makes a loud, disagreeable noise. Jenny offers to order a pizza. 

They order, it arrives, it's paid for. 

They all drag themselves to the kitchen, tearing off slices. Pandora, strange to the food looks at it warily until Jenny plates a slice for her. "It's good," Jenny nods. "Unless you disagree with dairy, then cheese isn't for you."

Pandora swallows and glances around warily at how the others eat it and then reaches for the crust, biting into it first. Her eyebrows shoot up. She likes the salty starchy ness of it and offers a small smile to Jenny. 

"Well, yeah, sure some people do it that way." 

An aborted snicker across the table makes Pandora's eyes flicker to Danny who seems to laugh at her before focusing on his own slice. Without a word he glides a container towards her. She glances at it curiously. "Dipping sauce." He offers, gesturing to her crust. "You dip that in it, it's garlic. Unless that's bad for you." he says pointedly. 

"She's not a vampire Danny," Sophie scolds, rolling her eyes. 

Danny looks at his colleague, affronted. "This woman bared fangs at me today, did you forget that?"

"I no longer have fangs." Pandora interrupts, voice faintly restored to her usual cunning before she continues. "But I _do_ still bite"

He gapes at her, adams apple bobbing. His appetite fleeing him.

Jenny and Sophie snicker at his reaction and nudge Pandora who gives a little smirk in turn, enjoying this moment of comraderie. None of them seem to notice Crane slipping from the room to call down Abbie and Joe.

* * *

"Miss Mills, Master Corbin, we've ordered....."

He hears splashing and voices. Ichabod Crane isn't a stupid man, he can deduce there's probably something going on that he shouldn't hear but then he hears Abbie's panting moans and cries.  

 _"I'm not gonna break ---_ _Ohhhh **Joe.**_ "

_"No but by the time I'm finished with you, you might,"_

_"You wouldn't break me,"_

" ** _Abbie_ "**

" _Give it to me,"_

" ** _God yes"_**

" _Faster, faster, oh"_

_"Like this baby"_

_" **Yes, Yes, Yes."**_

And that's quite enough. He wrestles with his hurt and morbid curiosity. The sounds Abbie makes will never be because of him. They're so breathy and soft and vulnerable, he finds hearing this side of her riveting but it's so intimate and the equally warm, rugged tones Joe's voice shake him. He hurries back downstairs, takes a seat, takes a slice, and focuses on eating.

* * *

 

After, entwined, joined, trading open soft kisses with dips of tongue and tenderly stroking his face Abbie meet's Joe's eyes.

"I'm ready to say it now, Joe Corbin." she smiles at him, bright, happy. " I love you."

Joe's eyes twinkle as his lips capture hers again, holding her close.  "I love you, Abbie"

It's perfect. 

It's theirs. 


	23. Chapter 23

Dawn breaks on them curled beneath the sheets. A leg thrown over hers and his hand tucked up beneath her breast, their fingers twined. His breath is warm on the back of her neck. 

After the bath last night he'd helped her out of the tub and onto the bed, chasing after her still with ghosting touches and kisses. Stroking her skin gently until they drifted off to sleep naked as the day they were born in each others arms. When Abbie's eyes crack open it's because she feels Joe's lips touching softly on her shoulder, behind her ear, a light nip at her ear lobe. "Morning," he murmurs, voice a little deeper and groggy but warm and affectionate. He tugs her closer against him with  a little squeeze. 

"Morning....oh,  _morning_." She smiles, feeling him pressing against her. He chuckles into her hair. 

"Hope you don't mind,"

Abbie rolls over, facing him, looking into the clear blue green of his eyes. Pure eyes, she decides in that moment. They can't conceal and they can't hide, they just shine the truth of him. Looking into his eyes all she sees is twinkling amusement and love. "I mean would you like help with that?" she asks, brow raised, ticking her head downwards. He leans in to kiss her. Tender and slow at first, tugging her lip with his teeth. 

"What, this thing? No, I'm good just being here with you."

Abbie laughs softly, reaching for him. "Let me rephrase: I'd very much like, to help you with that," She moves her hand up along the shaft watching his nose flare and his pupils dialate. She licks her lips. "Do you object?"

* * *

 

Abbie wonders how many mornings they can spend like this. Making love at sun rise. She thinks this with her hands clasped behind Joe's neck, eyes always on him as he thrusts slow, deep, long strokes, their voices soft panting breaths and searing kisses, swallowing each other's scream of ecstasy. And after, just his head thrown in her shoulder as he breathes, kissing her neck. Fingers  wriggling in her sides until she squeals, ticklish, playfully pushing him away. His laughter is so clear and robust as he rolls off of her, fending off the assault she launches in return. "Stop, stop, Abbie, have mercy!" 

"Never," she taunts with a wicked glint in her eye. But yet her hands still, trading to stroke his chest lovingly instead as she looms above him. "What do you want for breakfast baby"

He quirks a brow. "Baby?"

"It's what you called me last night." She glances up at him a little shyly from beneath her lashes,  "And I liked it. A lot."

Sitting up his arms curl around her, brushing her hair back from her face and caressing her cheek. "Well, baby," a soft peck. "I'm not big on breakfast. Cereal maybe."

Abbie scoffs. "You? not big on breakfast? I remember you going down in a stack of pancakes."

"Yeah well now I go down on you." he has the gall to lick his lips. "Your point?" 

Abbie gapes at him in shock. "Joe, Corbin.....You. Are. A. Dirty, boy. A filthy beast." she taps his chest for emphasis as he grins at her. This Joe is a little different than before. Self assured and bold.

"Your beast." he counters, matter of fact. "I'll eat anything Abbie, pancakes, cereal, green eggs and ham, you---"

"You need to stop," Abbie turns away from him, hiding a smile of amusement and hopefully the blush that's rising aggressively in her cheeks. "You're going to spoil me," she scolds, skipping to the closet she haphazardly snatches at a tank, bottoms and a light little satin robe as she makes for the bathroom. 

"Are you taking a shower?" he asks. 

Narrowed eyes squint at him, teasing. "Yes, why---Joe!" an exclamation as he suddenly bounds off the bed in her direction. She tries to slam the door but she doesn't put up much of a fight and he pushes in easily, gathering her in his arms and planting messy loud kisses all over her face and neck, making her drop the clothes she'd brought in and she can barely stave off her shrieks and giggles. "Joe! stop, put me down!" 

"Me? I'm not doing anything"

"You smug---mmmph!" 

Lips on hers, some one of them manages to turn on the water. Somehow they get in the shower. They lather each other lovingly and Abbie hardly makes it out before he can grab her again. He mockingly growls at her as she darts out, dressing hurriedly.  

Though she does pause a moment in the mirror of her room, to note that Joe did leave love bites, visible ones, on her shoulder, her chest. She even takes a minute to admire them, her face heating again as she takes to the stairs, beelining for the kitchen where she hears running water. 

"Pandora?" she calls, shocked to find the woman scrubbing calmly, her posture straight, though relaxed, and a calm countenance on her face. "Pand---"

"Mmm?" Shaking herself from her thoughts the woman turns. "Oh. Good morning Abbie."

"Hey." Abbie advances slowly, cautiously, some part of her might have forgotten Pandora stayed the night. Joe pretty much obliterated all of her thoughts about everything beyond the two of them the night before. "You, you don't have to do, that."

"We made a mess last night. I am strange to mortality now, but I think this was called manners. Helping to tidy the disarray you cause."

Abbie pauses, working her mouth. "Well. Thank you."

"My pleasure Abbie."

"Are you well?"

"I will adapt," the former goddess replies, quickly, adamantly. "I took to the wicked once. To be good, should not be too hard. I.....I have a chance at something more fulfilling now. I will not waste it." 

"I just don't want you to think you have to earn your keep here, like a maid. I mean, there's a long way to go before we all trust you" she points out. 

Pandora ducks her head. "I understand, I am only grateful you would try with me at all, Abbie. Your kindness....." for the first time the goddess looks contrite and a tear squeezes out from beneath her lashes, making its course down her cheek. When she speaks her voice is a little smaller, fragile.  ".....I haven't known, the like, in so long," she huffs, laughing weakly. "I'd forgotten the potency of it." She finally meets Abbie's eyes. "I would not dare dream of squandering this. I do want this new life you've given me. I want to..." Abbie's heart breaks a little watching Pandora's eyes fill with hope. Not the power ravenous ambition she has grown accustomed to, but the pure unbridled hope of someone who daydreams and aspires. Pandora coughs, clearing her throat and looking shy. "It's....such a folly, considering what I have been, what I have seen, what I have done. But...I want to.....laugh. For no proper reason more than I'm amused and enjoying present company. To....to cook. Isn't that silly?"

Abbie shakes her head, moved as she approaches her. "No, not silly at all. You don't know how?"

"What need had I?" she laughs, throwing her arms up in the air. "I fed off of fear. Off the quintessential essences of humanity. I hungered for power and grew greedy with it. I thought.....I let him convince me, or maybe I chose to believe him, but I cam to think that was all there was." Quietly, she turns back to the dishes she was washing. " My taste buds dulled to anything that wasn't malicious magic. But last night, I tried....piz-za? And it was salty, and doughy and warm....gooey, with cheese and I felt...full. Comforted."

Abbie grins. "Fatty food does that to you." She grasps the fridge handle and wrenches it open, poking her head in and seeing what she's got. "Do I have bananas...." she mutters to herself, glancing  over at the kitchen table. 

"I enjoyed it," Pandora continues. "I have a taste for food again, I had an apple this morning and it was crisp and sweet. The water is cool and clear. It feels....like part of me, is alive again. I want all the flavours, now Abbie!" she continues, pausing with a dish in hand, growing excited at the prospect. "I want to taste and create them! And.....and to share with others. Breaking bread with the rest of your team last night there was....banter, laughter, a feeling of---"

"Friendship." Abbie surmises, pulling out eggs and bacon too. 

Pandora nods. "Yes, and it was so....so lovely, to feel connected, over something as simple as, salty meats and cheeses on dough." 

When Abbie turns toward the counter she finds Pandora gazing off wistfully and she chuckles to herself. "Stop washing Pandora." 

The woman freezes, her expression fracturing. "Have I done something wrong, Abbie forgive me if---"

Abbie blinks at her, then gestures to the ingredients she has lined up. "If you want to learn to cook. I'm making pancakes and bacon and whatever else. Yesterday was a  _trip_ and I am  _famished_." 

"And you have a young man to feed," Pandora adds, a little coy. 

Not meeting the woman's eyes Abbie bites her lips together to keep from laughing. Hoping the heat creeping over her skin doesn't give her away. 

"He loves you, and you love him?" Pandora queries, gladly joining Abbie at the counter and cocking her head to the side. 

"Yes."

"I could see the truth of it." she replies. "Do we need a bowl?"

Abbie nods. "A bowl, a whisk---top drawer there, looks metal..roundish thing, that's it!.....It's....it's still very new. And....it's a new day now. I'm not sure how Jenny will take it, with her senses back in tact." 

Pandora tsks. "Power laced stupor she may have been in, but Jennifer did not once utter the name of Joe while in my care. Yours, she called for you continuously. I suppose that's why I thought....well it was an ill thought."

"That you would make us a powerful witch trio family?"

"I did say it was ill," Pandora counters testily. "I....I do not believe there was time for her bonds to him to grow deep, as yours with him had done. At least, not deep enough for her to much care after, once the Eye had her." 

Abbie cracks one egg after the other then reaches for the butter. "It just...changes things a little bit. Knowing he had gone to her first and now chooses me....Jenny and I both have our share of feeling abandoned, rejected. I don't want to cause her more pain.....but what I have with Joe----"

"Anyone with eyes whether they wish to see it or not, Abbie, can see, that you two are happy together. Anyone who loves you, should rejoice in that. Put themselves aside. Jennifer is a beautiful young woman, I'm sure, she will find her hearts desire elsewhere." Her eyes latch on the whisk in Abbie's hand. "May I try?" 

"Sure," she concedes, turning toward the cupboards to reach for the essence. She rejoins Pandora and adds a splash. 

"For what it's worth," Pandora says, her gaze solely focused on her task, "I am happy for you. To have something so warm and pure......especially for all the trouble I have caused you, you deserve nice things." She stops and locks eyes with Abbie. "Enjoy him, is what I mean to say. Enjoy each other. Be true to each other.....and nothing else.....the rest won't matter, come what may."

Abbie pauses at the stove where she's got the frying pan in one hand and fiddling with the stove top knobs with the other. "Is that how you felt about the Hidden One? Before."

"Bah." Pandora waves her hand dismissively. "In the beginning, perhaps. I'm not sure how or when it changed....but the love left and possessiveness, competition, a want to be the better took its stead. So no, I am not trying to advise you be like my departed husband and I.....after all what I had with him cannot have been love. Did you see me cry for his demise?"

Blinking, Abbie runs down the day prior in her mind and realizes that no, Pandora had not expressed any sadness or emotion about the gods defeat at all. Only tears when Abbie had said they were taking her in. Pandora watches her knowingly, seeing Abbie's mind work before offering one of her old, cutting smiles. "You see? I did not. Not a single one. Now....what do we do this?" she asks hefting the bowl. 

"Bring it over here and I'll show you how to flip your first flapjack."

The women work quietly then, talking only about the food. Pandora listening to Abbie reminisce about their mother making breakfast, and even some of her own recollections cooking for Corbin and Joe when she was younger and knew more about the kitchen than the two of them combined. Showed Pandora how to flip them and the woman whooped with delight when she was successful on her first try. "See," Abbie pats her shoulder. "You're a natural. Keep going here and I'll clean some of the other stuff out of the way."

While she stows flour and sugar Pandora hums tunelessly while she plates pancake after pancake, rather proudly when she says at last, "If I may be honest, Abbie....what you have with...Joe? is it?....I hope I....in time....can have something like that, for myself. I'd do it proper this time. Love."

Abbie approaches with the bacon after Pandora slides the last pancake out of the pan smiles. "You know Pandora......I hope you can find that too." she's surprised she could have kind words for the woman, she never thought she would. But Pandora's want to embrace her second go at humanity is earnest and profound. The answering smile she receives in turn makes her think that in time she may very  well honestly call Pandora a friend.

"That means a lot, Abbie. Thank you."

"Abbie baby it smells amazing in here," Joe bellows, striding in, simple t shirt and pants from the night before, his face joyful until he notices Pandora, faltering a moment in his steps. "Right. You're part of the gang now. Joe Corbin," he offers his hand to shake and Pandora looks down at in amusement before shaking and giving a bow of her head.

"Pandora," she darts her eyes between the pair and excuses herself from the stove. "Abbie if you do not mind, I will cut this mornings lesson short, I would like to wash, but I thank you for your instruction this, Will you show me other things?" 

Abbie nods. "Sure Pandora. Take the stairs there, there's a bath upstairs."  Another nod in Pandora makes herself scarce. 

Joe watches her go and then sidles up to Abbie at the stove, sliding his arms around her waist. "Hmmmm." he hums as he bends to kiss behind her ear, inhaling the scent of her hair and skin. She leans back against him, just a tad, revelling in the feeling of his chest at her back, the warmth of him. "So, this is weird, having her here, isn't it?" he asks softly. 

Shrugging Abbie turns the bacon. "To be fair, our lives are always weird....but considering I'd have been happy calling her dead not too long ago.....yes it is a little strange to be giving her cooking lessons," she snickers at the absurdity of it all. "You need more?" she asks, pointing to the pan. 

"Bacon? no, you? always."

"Since when are you this flirty?" she giggles, shaking her head. His arms tighten around her. 

"You should know, I'm all in all the way when given the chance. I'm going to come on you strong with all the love, silliness and heart in me. That's really just me. That's the man I am when I'm free to be with someone I love. But if it's too much---"

"It's just enough," she interrupts. Of all things, she replays Pandora's words in her head.  _Enjoy him_. "I like your flirting Joe. I like your smile, the way your eyes twinkle. The way you look at me when...." her voice drops to a bare whisper and she turns slightly to talk over her shoulder at him. "The way you look at me when you're inside me."  She turns back to the bacon, perfectly crisp, switches off the stove and turns in his arms, reaching up around his neck. "Whatever you have to offer, I want it." She raises herself on tip toe to kiss him, tipping his balance a little he backs up with her in his arms till he hits the island. Then in a fell swoop grips her by the waist, swings around and deposits her on the counter, her legs dangling on either side of him as he moves in closer, kissing her slow and sweet, a hand fiddling with the knot on her robe. "Someone will walk in," she cautions, giggling as his fingers find her sides. Joe chuckles.

"Let them."

* * *

"You're being really creepy." 

Pandora jolts from where she watches in the dining room, peeking her head around to watching through the open space of dining to hall to kitchen. When she turns around it's Danny looming behind her. His gaze narrow and distrustful. 

"How long have you been watching them"

Pandora flusters. "They are very sweet together, I just---"she cuts herself off, realizing she must sound foolish, and apparently she looks it too, spying on the pair, trying to understand, to see what love, this mortal human kind, can look like. Cataloguing Joe's tender playfulness with Abbie and how she lights up at his teasing. Watching them Pandora tries to imagine herself being like that with a man. She cannot remember if it was ever anything this light and new with her husband. She's only curious, only a little hopeful that she will one day have what they do for herself....though yes, feeling her face begin to turn red, she is going about it the wrong way. "I have forgotten my manners." she says instead, ducking away and around Danny who sidesteps into her path. 

"Don't try anything."

"I would ask you to elaborate, Mr....."

"Reynolds. Daniel Reynolds. My friends call me Danny." he emphasizes in a way that clearly conveys he does not consider her a friend. 

"Daniel, Reynolds."

"I mean, I don't know much about this" he gestures vaguely. "Business, they're caught up in, but I know you have been a lot of trouble, and I'm letting you know right now I'm watching you if you think of causing any---"

"Mischief and mayhem" Pandora coos. "Fret not, mortal. I have far humbler aspirations for myself."

"Oh is that rig---"

"Yes. It is." Pandora quips. "Abbie is teaching me to cook. To start. And once I acclimate here.....well maybe I can start over and find a new partner," she glances at him slyly. "A lover. Someone to have with what Abbie and Joe share.  _Those_ are my only wants."

Danny folds his arms stubbornly. "I've got an eye on you Pandora."

A thin smirk spreads across her lips and she tosses her hair over her shoulder. "You may keep watch, Daniel, but I will be convinced it's because you like what you see." She turns on her heel and leaves Danny gaping after her, fighting and failing to find a comeback. He starts to go after her, to have the last word, but just glimpses Crane rounding the corner into the kitchen. He's about to call out a warning but they exclamations he hears tells him he's too late. 

* * *

 Crane walks in to Joe holding Abbie in place on the counter while they kiss and murmur together. 

"I've got teeth marks, you know," Joe says to her in a purr between kisses. "From when you bit me last night."

"I'm not sorry." 

"I didn't think you would be," he grins, going in for another kiss when he catches sight of Crane standing in horror in the doorway. Joe swallows, pats Abbie's thighs as a signal to stop and clears his throat. "Morning Crane!"

"Crane!" Abbie yelps, clutching the robe back together, tying a tight knot and sliding off the counter with Joe's help, busily grasping for the plate of pancakes and bacon and asking Joe to start the coffee as she saunters out to the dining room, hollering as she goes that breakfast is ready. 

Crane's adams apple bobs and he breathes deeply through his nose. "Morning, Master Corbin."

"Look I'm sorry about---"

Crane raises a hand. "No need, you are two, consenting adults who care...very....deeply....for each other." He grits out. "Young love!" he says brightly, but fails to mask his discomfort and hurt. "Can't contain it. I understand, Master Corbin I do."

"I'm not....we never meant to hurt anyone Crane. But she makes me happy, I make her happy. But I am sorry to hurt you, and I'm not trying to rub anything in anyone's face." Joe's brows furrow. He's always had a friendship with Crane, in the wake of revealing his affair with Abbie everything between them had gone heatedly sour, but it's only now that Joe truly considers their friendship may be ruined by the wants of his heart. 

The other man exhales and tousles his hair helplessly. "I....I know, Joe. It is not an easy thing for me to see but......I see it, saw it, last night, after the battle, the look you shared....I'll get over it. I must. I only ask that if it's going to be you, love her, in all the ways I could not....would not....out of my own fickle indecisiveness. Give her everything, Joe. To see her happy....it's what she deserves and what I want for her. In time....in time I will be happy for you both. But do not curb yourselves on account of me." 

It sinks in then that he's hurt the man. He hopes that they will recover from it, but Joe doesn't insult Crane now to ask for his friendship again so soon. Instead he nods, offers Crane a cup of coffee and hesitantly, they clink mugs before taking a swig. 

 

 


End file.
